


Under That Sky

by shadow_in_the_shade



Category: Voyná i mir | War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Part AU, Partial Canon Compliance, Sibling Incest, Tragedy, three way relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-17
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-05-21 04:30:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 34
Words: 81,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6038082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadow_in_the_shade/pseuds/shadow_in_the_shade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes the sky provokes epiphany but for others there is too much to do, too much life to be lived and when infinity does make itself known it is somehow remarkably unimportant. A fairy tale in reverse, and the prince and princess never get to marry however wrong it seems. </p><p>This is probably going to be one terribly long fic, Anatole/ Helene centric but with a definite side of Dolokhov, starting ten years before the opening events of War and Peace and ending after its finale. Could be regarded as AU especially in the later sections.</p><p>In relation to the tags - The MCD tag is just for canon MCD but there's for sure not gonna be a happy ending. Also I tagged for book because I'm using characters and book events that don't appear in the show and also the ending will have more of a chance of being viable in relation to book canon but I'm aware that my characterizations are more bbc than Tolstoy, hence the double - tag. :-)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Under That Sky**

**Prologue**

 

 

and the sky looks down and does not care.

There comes a point when the noise and smoke and the vibrations in the earth fade away; a point where the head is throbbing from the cannon fire, so loud it would be impossible to guess if those cannons were still firing or not. Some say it grows quiet when this point comes, but it is not quiet. It is something else; something that becomes surreal and impossible to define under the remorseless glare of that sky that scrutinises so hard and demands that you stare back, demands that you answer your life’s deepest questions and come to terms with how small you are, how immovable, unchangeable, how fatalistic this all is. That whole grey sky like the over-arching eye of god demanding you believe, believe in something beyond the scope of your tiny life.

But he never thought of his life as tiny. How could he. He had been born to so much, such privilege and so little responsibility. Now is the time he should feel the weight of it, feel the weight of error and of his own smallness in a grander scheme. The very sky demands it, shouts out to be the biggest thing in anyone’s existence, riding high above the battlefield and the inability to move, above the pain and the pounding and the steadily numbing sensation of that pain becoming too much to bear. But he cannot see the eye of god, just a misty covering of blue and grey like the eye of a young girl, wide and watching. Watching him like he is wonderful, telling him everything he would like to hear.

There was a girl once; trust him to think of it now. Wasn’t there? It seems in place of an all-encompassing force there is instead and all-encompassing _she._ Her eyes were not the blue of that sky, nor any sky. He found their reflection in his own eyes; in the heavy smoke and confusion, she could _be him,_ so alike to himself he cannot quite remember if she exists. Is he, as he is so often accused, just thinking of himself after all? Is it himself he has always been in love with? It seems an easy mistake to make.

But he remembers a moment, a dream, lying on his back staring up at the sky just as he is now. No, not just as he is now, a million miles away and worlds away. Where were they? When were they? He is thinking of himself in the plural again. He has been prone to that all his life; something beyond the easy plural of childhood reminiscence, an unconscious _we_ always spoken in moments of recollection even when the other is not there to reinforce it.

_“Look –” she says, pointing. His eyes follow her arm to the tip of a delicate finger – “That one’s a wolf heading straight for the sun.”_

_“I don’t see it – where?” the sun in his eyes, in her hair; he remembers it now like diamonds, rainbows on her cheeks, the smell of meadowsweet and his sister’s skin._

He scans the sky for shapes now, but everything is grey. If it will still be grey when the smoke dies down, he could not know, could not say. The wolf has got the sun in its jaws, and for all he knows the sky beyond the battlefield could be red and dripping.

_She takes his hand and makes him point where she thinks she is pointing herself, pulling him around with simple, lazily proprietary gestures, like she owns him, like he is any one of her toys and she just can. He does not even argue with her._

_“There!” she insists, with childish irritation, a sigh in her voice that he could be so slow. She turns her head to look at him looking up, her hair brushing the side of his face, smelling of grasses and her. His hand was in hers in the grass beside them, fingers clenching and unclenching just for the pleasant reminder of the feel of each other’s skin._

He reaches for her in the grass and mud of the field, fingers clenching and unclenching, finding nothing but discarded weaponry and sludge. How old were they then? On that day when she saw the wolf eat the sun? He wishes he could remember, wishes he could think straight. He does not have the strength of mind; he has never had her strength of mind. They were children, old enough to be aware of each other but not old enough to quite know what their awareness meant or foretold. It seems impossible that her hand is not within his reach now.

_“I still don’t see it.” He is too distracted; the sun is so warm and in his eyes, making his head hurt and the earth just as warm and there is a wind in the meadow that flutters her skirts against his leg and he wants to touch, to feel everything that is so soft and close and on this day his, and on this day he cannot see why it should not be his forever. Nothing is wrong and everything is right. The sky is theirs, a toy to play with._

_“You_ have _to see it” she whines – “We see the same, don’t we? We_ have _to.” It did seem to him that she had to be right, that they had to be the same or be nothing. He is just beginning to despair when he sees the jaws of the wolf reaching in for the sun._

_“I see it!” he announces – the teeth just there, like so,” he draws it on the sky with his finger, moving her hand with his._

_“Yes – and the tail there-” she draws it with both their hands; the sky their paper, sketching out for each other dragons and fish, animals and birds a young girl dancing and a drunkard asleep on a public bench. Later, she insists too - a hussar fighting a giant on the edge of a cliff. He sees it all because her eyes are also his._

He glares his challenge back at the sky now. _I am not afraid of you, you were just a toy; all the world is just my toy – our toy-_ his mind amends, they have always been good at sharing. He wonders whilst the world falls sideways if he is dying, if he will die here; he cannot even remember the name of this place. There are bright lights behind his eyes and he has stopped being able to feel his legs, bright lights like the sun in a young girl’s eye. He almost laughs thinking about it; he will be remembered as someone for whom there were so many young girls, when in truth there was only ever one. The sound comes out more as a cough than as a laugh and soon after he hears voices and the thrum of feet coming closer to his head, on the ground, in the field, in the smoke.

And the sky will try and have its say, will force him to make eye contact, thrust some kind of epiphany upon him. It is still just a toy, even at this end. He was given a suggestion of the world once, and deciding it was his right to own it, has never given it back. _Everything,_ he seems to hear her say- _everything is ours just to take._ It is a lie, he knows, it was always a lie and he will never forgive anything in the world for being disallowed the one thing that would have made his life a happy one. He will not forgive that lofty sky which demands he admit all his ignorance and his willingness to surrender himself to the terrible new knowledge and truth of existence. _Look at me,_ it insists, _know me now. But I do not have to,_ he thinks. _I don’t surrender to you, nor anyone but her. You are just a bauble to be polished into sparkle and offered as a gift to the perfect girl. No, I don’t have to look at you._ He turns his face into the mud, happy enough to breathe it in, smell the rot and dirt and blood in his nose and eyes. This is where he should be, he thinks, and he thinks it with a kind of glorious happiness, a reality of life that raises him above the cool, infallible, ridiculous sky. He has flown up there a hundred times on the back of all the sensations of his life. It is not so far away, not so untouchable, it is after all somewhat limited. _Fuck the sky,_ he thinks as consciousness departs him _Fuck your epiphany. Give me something I can touch. Give me my sister’s smile._

__x__

 

**The timeline may jump around in a non - chronological manner from this point onwards but I WILL normally tag for character and year at the top, this chapter being the exception! Ugh, and I mean no disrespect to Andrey in this, I think about his scene after Austerlitz looking at the sky almost every day of my life; I've always wondered how different it could be for someone who had always felt like they had really lived their life and been more or less happy with who they were. Essentially, this is probably the fic I've needed to write since I was 14!**


	2. Helene, 1797

**Hélène, 1797**

She is the living cliché; the girl who does not like the company of other girls, who is, if she is being honest, rather proud of the fact that other girls do not like her either. She wishes to spend time with them about as much as they do with her- or less. She prides herself above even other such girls as herself, because she is not ashamed to admit to herself or anyone who asks that she knows she is more beautiful than they are.

It is lonely, she has heard people say, to be a girl like this. But she, at fifteen, is incapable of loneliness. She cannot remember a time when she felt truly alone. Oh certainly at parties; in society, in the company of other women, but never to any long term effect. Perhaps before her brother was born – but as she was no more than three then, she does not delude herself that it could be a time that she remembers. She only lies to people, she always says, never to herself. She knows who and what she is and has been; who she will be and how her life will be. It will all be so beautiful, so perfect. She is proud of this too – her self-awareness, her essential honesty, proud and confident, at the height of her arrogance in this, the last summer of her innocence; or any such innocence as she still retains.

Innocence is such an arbitrary concept, she thinks; or a commodity. She is not quite sure yet. She has heard adults talk about it in reference to a young girl’s worth for as long as she can remember. She understands as far as she can, that it has something to do with those sexual acts of which nobody speaks to her – she understands they are not to be spoken of with anyone – but of which everybody somehow hears anyway. Through this whispering she understands it to be all caught up with a sense of shame and wickedness. She wonders if, in truth, this is not where the loss of innocence really lies – not in what she might do with her body but in how she might feel about it afterwards. Or maybe it lies in having your heart broken; she has thought about this too. But she does not intend on having her heart broken so she might, she thinks, stay innocent forever. That such a thing could happen to her is strange and unbelievable.

She thinks about her body and is intrigued by it, looks at herself in front of the mirror to observe the changes taking place in her appearance.  She cannot see how it has happened; it seems to her she must always have looked like this. She wonders what she will look like when she is an adult, what shape she will become. She is shouted at when her governess finds her looking at herself like this, examining her breasts in the glass. She wants to ask if it is _all_ sinful, the whole body, or if it is only these breasts and the other changes that make her wicked. Somehow she knows she cannot ask these questions and that she should feel bad. But she does not feel bad, just angry at having been discovered and cross that she is being shouted at. She wonders if this makes her wrong, broken in some way. She does not _feel_ broken.

She knows too that these parts of herself, these fascinating places, feel nicer when touched than any other part. She supposes she has done at least most of the things the adults whisper about in silence with herself, and yes, with her brother. They know that for some reason it is wicked to touch and have whispered wonderingly about it, touching all the same, wide eyed and curious that it feels so nice and is for some reason thought of so badly.

It makes no sense, they decide. They can come to the conclusion only that they are right and everyone else is wrong. It makes a great deal more sense. After all, they have some idea too that this is not even the whole of it, there is still something more to do.

But in the last two years she finds herself being told more and more that she has to spend time with other girls her own age and less time with her brothers. They always say that – her _brothers_ – though in truth what their time consists of is mostly her and Anatole trying to lose Hyppolit, running off when the three of them are thrown together, blinking at him silent and unnerving when he tries to come in on their whispered talks. So often they find themselves running off to hide behind a curtain, curled into the window seat together; _conspiring,_ people always say when they are found – though they never can remember what it is they are plotting, only that it always seems very important at the time. Hyppolit especially tries to break into their world, pull those curtains aside and demand a share of the conversation. Neither quite certain how it happens so in sync, they look up at him steadily; eyes wide and dark and staring, looking at him in feigned curiosity so unnervingly that eventually he always goes away and then they laugh and go on as though nothing ever occurred. The first time it happens they even spook themselves.

“Did you mean to do that?” she whispers.

“What?”

“Like – like a cat staring down a mouse.”

“He _is_ a mouse,” he laughs.

“Did you know I was going to do that too?”

“No –” he frowns – “And yes. Let’s do it again next time.”

They laugh, never able to explain why they find things funny, but then, never needing to. She has heard that twins can read each other’s thoughts, react together in identical gestures. She supposes they must just be like that. It makes everyone else in the world rather invalid and dull.

But tonight she has been thrown together with some of Bezuchov’s nieces and some other of their acquaintances, princesses, _like yourself_ her father said, but it makes her lips curl knowing she is _nothing_  like them -  and she finds herself bored and superior, aware that wherever they are tonight her brothers will be having more fun than she is. She has known for years that men can have more fun than women and has never been able to work out the whys of that either.

The princesses are lounging, none of them wholly comfortably, in Olga’s suite in Bezuchov’s mansion. She has always enjoyed the over-sized opulence of this house, if not the company she has to keep. The girls are talking – she yawns to hear them – about boys. They are whispering as though it is very shocking that they should be doing this. She feels herself too old for this silliness, feels she knows it all already and more than they would ever talk about.

“Have you heard –” Princess Sophie laughs suddenly, as though imparting a great secret – “About seeing your future in the mirror?”

_No, what is that, tell us?_

Hélène yawns quite ostensibly, stretching on the chaise – longue, picking at a gold thread in the green and gold brocade. She imagines it as a landscape, wheat fields and twisting meadows in between. It seems so small, she imagines herself flying high above it, pushing aside clouds and swimming through the sky. Everything is small, she thinks, this whole world and these silly girls most of all. Sophie is talking about how you look at yourself in a hand mirror in a darkened room with just one candle flame and wish, and how if you wish hard enough you will see the face of your one true love. The girls all giggle; presumably, Hélène breathes deeply in an audible sigh – presumably because none of them have ever been in love, know what love is or have any idea who their one true love will be. Olga is teasing Sophie about wanting to see prince so- and – so and Sophie is blushing and it is all quite unbearably tedious. Hélène assumes her future to be inviolable, untouchable; to have everything just exactly as she wants it like she can have everything else.

 “Let’s try it!” Olga is saying, getting up, as Hélène knew she would. She starts to blow out all the candles apart from the one in her hand. The gathering dark makes the girls giggle and they jump up onto the large canopied bed, gathering around the silver hand mirror and the candle.

“You too, Hélène!”

“ _Mais non,”_ she pouts, assuming a more bored and languid air even than she feels “ç _a mes egal, aller d’avant sans moi.”_

She waves a hand airily, limp-wristed, knowing that she only alienates them further with her superior French, and they roll their eyes at her and she hears Julie whispering to Olga –

“She thinks she’s better than us,” and she shrugs visibly because she does think it and is not about to repeat to them how little she cares, even though suspects they did not understand her when she said it the first time. But Olga is _nice_ and _kind_ and nudges Julie to be quiet, insisting to Hélène that she join them.

“ _C’est vraiment ennuyeuse- ”_ she grumbles, though she lifts herself up all the same, moving with infinite elegance and gathering her skirts so as not to catch them on the side of the bed. The dress is new, pale blue chiffon and white lace. She is wasted in this company _“-  les hommes sont tous les_ _memes.”_

“Oh they’re not!” Sophie tosses her head – “Even you can’t say that.”

Hélène shrugs again, a curiously masculine gesture, and does not deign to reply. She kneels behind the rest of them, only half watching. It interests her, at least a little, how much they all pretend. They pretend to each other in everything they say. She is only ever that artificial when talking to adults. She does not understand, if these girls are friends, why they would be that way with each other. Well, she supposes, she has a right not to understand; she does not have friends. She watches them all one after the other take turns pretending to be mysterious and surprised. Watches them thrill with a mystery they are only dreaming up. Then she watches them also, as they pretend to see men in the mirror and laugh and exclaim, tease each other about who they might be and blush and laugh and blush.

“Helene, it’s your turn!” She knew it would come eventually and, rolling her eyes she takes the mirror in one hand and the candle in the other. She feels the warm wax, pliable beneath her fingers and the cool but now sweaty silver of the mirror’s handle. She looks in the mirror and smiles at herself. How could she not smile? She so enjoys what she sees. Her eyes are large and shining, with tiny flames inside, her skin like porcelain, ivory, all the smooth pale things that skin should be. Her eyes are like dark jewels in the snow, her smile dark and glittering. Her smile is a shadow swinging with refractions of glass. She is half in love with herself.

“Well?” the girls are twittering – “Who can you see?” She opens her mouth to say _I see myself_ when the candle flame flutters from the girls moving about on the bed and she is struck for a moment imagining her face, not quite as her but still her own. Her face if she was a man, the eyes just a  little shorter, her hair a little straighter, the same nose, the same smile, fuller lips, and sharper cheekbones. She smiles, more secretive than before and holding close to herself a truth she would never ever share with these idiots.

“I see myself,” she says, after a pause and it is true enough. It is all she ever expected to see and she smiles in smug satisfaction to know what it means.

“Hélène –” Olga shakes her head kindly, a little patronising, Hélène is above it.  “You love yourself too much”. She wants to laugh because it is close enough to the truth but far enough away that any rectification would make these silly girls die of shock. Perhaps she does love too much, but it is not _herself,_ not quite. She is surprised the mirror told her as much as it did. She supposes she half expected even the glass to be shocked, but how could she and her reflection ever be at odds; they were destined to be together always. Her secret glows bright inside her, on her own in the dark, surrounded by other girls.

She smiles at herself one last time and then shifts and the last thing she sees before Sophia takes the mirror of her is only the candle burning in her hand and burning in the mirror.

__x__

**French reads: _But no, I don’t care (polite) go ahead without me_ and _It’s too/ really boring – men are all the same._**

**I was struggling with Bezuchov’s relatives and thought Catiche might be too old at this point for playing silly games with the girls so gave them a random friend instead.**

**Have just reposted this now beta'd cause I forgot to before. :-)**

 


	3. Anatole, 1798

 

**So, just in case it went un-noticed I’ve pushed the rating up to E – thought I’d be able to keep it off longer than that but apparently not! TW for this being rather underage. :-)**

**Anatole, 1798**

He has been pacing his room ever since the others left. At first it was pure anger, storming, throwing things, breaking things in the tantrum he could not for one moment think of controlling. He feels as though he has been building up to this ever since his sister started wearing long skirts and father started showing her off to the world. She is not their father’s to show off, she is _his_ and as with all the things he likes he is utterly unwilling to share.

Hélène teases him that _mine_ was the first word he ever spoke. He is not sure if it is true or not, if she was even old enough herself to remember, and he does not want to betray his ignorance or naivety by ever asking her. Certainly she may be right in the point she is making, if not in the actual fact of it. He has never been held back from taking a thing that he wanted. He has always been wide eyed, running with open arms, hands poised to grab at the thing he wants. Every shining, delightful thing he has ever seen he has wanted to make his, wanted it passionately and stubbornly, wild with enthusiasm, if only for a season.

She is the only passion that has lasted, that has continued to hold sway over him for more than a few months at a time. She has been there since he can remember; the prettiest, most shining and delightful thing of all. He feels, every time he likes anything, that he does so with a deep and almost frightening love and he feels, with this same enthusiasm, that he has loved her since he was four. One of his first memories is of the two of them sat on the floor, sunlight streaming coldly through a window and seeming to pool in her hair, throwing a shine all around her like the lining on a cloud. She was wearing something around her neck that glittered and shivered rainbows across the nursery floor. He was trying to tap at it like a cat, to make the jewel swing at her throat and the rainbows fracture on the floor. She was batting his hands away and laughing and he could hardly look at her for the sun and the shimmer and the brightness all around her. Looking back he often thinks that this was the moment he first fell in love with her.

There have been many moments since then. There is one that stands out in memory for almost every year of his life. Pretty things have always been his greatest weakness, and she is the prettiest thing he has ever seen, and as such it is inconceivable to his sense of logic that she cannot be his and only his just like everything else.

He remembers another ball, three years ago now. That time they had both not been permitted to go and Hyppolite had _loved_ that. He had ruled the roost for almost a week with his sense of entitlement and victory. He had spent the whole week ostentatiously choosing and talking about his attire and Anatole repeatedly caught him talking to himself in front of the mirror, practising poses and posture, his wormy lips muttering to himself. He had turned his older brother’s room upside down until he found what he _knew_ Hyppolite was hiding somewhere – a notebook in which he wrote down version after version of all the jokes and witty things that he would say, teasing out all the words for the maximum effect. He was so convinced that he would be more amusing than everyone there. He had run straight to Hélène with the notebook and for days their main amusement had been quoting his own sayings at him in the most ridiculous voices until he realised what they had done by which time it was too late and they had already written out all his notes in triplicate, Hélène doing the actual writing and Anatole sticking them in choice spots all over the house.

Even so they had both been unbearably sore when the time came for their brother to leave, all the more so because the ball was being held in their own house and they could hear the sounds of music drifting up from downstairs. There was a sparkling cold air coming in from the open door and if they crept to the top of the stairs they could catch glimpses of the women in their evening dresses and the men in their coats coming into the golden dazzle of the house with the glitter of snow on their shoulders. Glimpses were all they could get before being hurried back to their room. Hyppolite, instead of his usual defence of just not talking to them, was being even worse than usual by talking to them extremely condescendingly and charmingly about everything they were missing, ignoring the fact that they were ignoring him and drifting towards the nursery door and the excitement of downstairs like moths to the most delightful of flames.

From almost the moment their brother left, throwing a condescending _Good night children_ over his shoulder, Hélène could see a storm brewing in Anatole’s face. She could see that he was on the brink of one of those tantrums that he knew by turns amused her, irritated her and made her actively angry – angry that however violent they became, they were always essentially tolerated and he knew she knew from experience that if she were the one to make any kind of noise or scene all she would get would be chastisement and a lecture on manners. He did not remotely understand why the difference should exist, but was glad he came out the better for it. And then, when they were both angry about the same thing, as was so often the case, he knew that she took a curious pleasure in his raging – venting her frustration vicariously through him.

She clearly had no time for it just now, however. She knew the signs; the pout, the way his forehead crumpled in the middle in a little frown line. Anatole was a stormy summer’s day – quick to thunder and just as quick to break out in sunshine. He was, Hélène had told him more than once, like a kitten that knows it has done wrong and also knows exactly how to make itself so adorable that all will be forgiven.

“Come on,” she said, decisively, taking his hand in hers and heading for the door – “And keep quiet!”

“Where are we going?” he whined, dragging.

“To the ball, silly!”

He looked at her askance and, hard though it was beneath that little – boy gaze, she ignored it, dragging him by the hand out the door and peering up and down the corridors cautiously. She headed, not down the main stairs but around a corner to where a shorter flight led to a curving balcony overlooking the main ballroom. Nobody could reach it except from the way they had come and she was sure nobody down there would think to look their way. Even so they stayed in a shadowed corner, kneeling and peering through the bannister rails, not knowing how much they mirrored each other, hands clasped tight in the centre, each with another hand clutching fervently at a rail. They peered down intently upon the scene below with hungry eyes shining.

“They’re all so beautiful!” Hélène breathed, entranced – “The women and the men!”

Down below the ballroom spun beneath the grand central chandelier, the ladies gowns fanning out in what became wide colourful circles to the watchers from above. So many colours, like a treasure trove of jewels, cool and shimmering ivories and silvers, warm golds and snowy whites. Everything all swirled together like paint with pinks and blues and greens, peacocks and sunsets spilling across the marbled floor.

“I wish _we_ could dance,” he heard himself say.

“I _can_ dance,” she tossed her head.

“So can I – somewhat – I mean I want to with _you.”_

“Well I don’t want to dance with _you”_ she grinned, more flirtatious at thirteen than she knew she could be – “You’ll step on me!”

“I won’t!” – that pout again! Sometimes it felt as though he was the girl and she the boy – “I promise. Dance with me, sister.”

She rolled her eyes but stood up all the same, smoothing out her skirt as she did so. They stifled so many giggles getting into position that it shocked them both into silence when they started to dance and almost immediately fell into a perfect harmony. It was not perfect dancing, they both knew it; often out of time and out of step, but it did seem that even when they were, they were out of step together. They flowed together like the music itself and when the music finally stopped they stared at each other in wide eyed delight. A hundred little quivers of emotion seemed to pass across Helene’s lips but all that came out was a quiet, insufficient -

“I had no idea you paid attention.”

“I wish we could do that down there. We’d look beautiful.”

She shrugged as though this was obvious, though she took more pride in how perfect they looked together than she would ever admit to anyone.

“Of course  we do.”

Suddenly they both started, hearing footsteps on the stairs; heads turning, small startled animals.

“Quick!” she hissed, grabbing him by the arm and dragging him through a door towards the back of the balcony. They got out of the way just in time before a young couple walked through onto the spot where they had just been standing.

They crouched in the dark, hearts beating so loudly they could hear them, so loud in the ears it seemed as though the people out there must be able to hear them too. In truth she had misjudged and this was a cupboard not a real room, and they found themselves pressed very close together in the half dark, the door open just a crack. But the young couple were clearly far too concerned in their own business to be paying any attention and the children jostled and pushed at each other to be the one with a better view through the crack. When the voices of the couple ceased and the purpose of their departure from the crowd became evident Hélène found her cheeks growing warm watching them, and kept slapping her little brother around the ear every time she felt a giggle well up in him. But as the kiss outside their door deepened even he found himself growing silent, fascinated and curiously uncomfortable in their confined space. It felt for a while as though they were holding one another’s breath through the strange little whimpers and sighs outside until the voices came back and soon they heard the intruders receding.

Somehow, even now that they _could_ move they found themselves not wanting to; just looking at each other with wide dark eyes and a curious new awareness.

“Is that – _kissing?”_ he whispered in a tone of vague awe.

“ _Quelle stupide!”_ she muttered, glad the dark hid the redness in her face and that he was close enough to feel her nod.

“Have you ever –?” She pushed him a little.

“No, of course not!”

“Good.”

“Why good?”

“I don’t want anyone else to kiss you.” He paused for a moment, frowning, trying to work his way around a feeling he feared was too big for him.

“Do you want –”

“Oh don’t be so tiresome, Toto!”

“But _I_ want to kiss someone!”

“Then kiss someone! I don’t care!”

It was not far in the dark and so close as they were already crouched to reach his face to hers and kiss her, catching just the corner of her lip in the clumsiest of kisses. She sighed and shook her head, sighed out his name in a long suffering breath, took his face in one hand and bent her face to his –

“ _Slowly,”_ she whispered and this time he managed. He felt, even then as though they were fitting together, just as they had when they had danced, that her lips were both familiar and unknown and that he could kiss her forever. When her lips parted their tongues brushed so shyly at first – he could feel the warmth of her cheek against his - but there was no inclination to break away or urge to ever even leave this cupboard not for the longest time. He felt as though they might stay like this until the ball was long over and all the people long gone. After a while she whispered his name again and it was like no way in which he had heard her say it before. He offered her her own back in reply and it occurred to him how little he ever said it to her. It felt like a pledge, this exchange of names, a promise, as though he was saying so much more than he could even fully think through to himself and that she was saying it too, feeling whatever he was feeling though he was not entirely sure what that was. He kissed her again after that and later admitted that he would rather like to do that often. For once she had been the one to struggle for words and just nodded in reply, chest heaving with a feeling that frightened her. He understood; he was a little afraid as well. Not too much so to seek her out every night or other night from then on, building every time upon what they had started that day, knowing instinctively to keep it secret without any real idea that it could be wrong.

And now he paces, fists tight, boiling gently with frustration and vexation, remembering that night and how he had fallen in love with her again, wondering if he is doomed to fall in love with her over and over again and nobody else. He has changed since then – at least a little – learned that he should not feel this way about his sister, but since he cannot fathom out a real reason why, he has never even tried to feel otherwise. She has suggested whispers of _wrong_ to him, but even she cannot seem to follow it up with an explanation. He is not hurting anyone and it feels like the best and sweetest, most delightful thing in the world when they are together. So no, he will not change, could not, he imagines, if he wanted to.

He has been promised that tonight will be the last he is left behind, though this does not make him feel better just now. It is still the first that she has gone without him and he feels tight, ribs aching as though something tying them together is being pulled. He knows it would take more than distance to break that connection, but that does not mean it does not hurt. Instead of feeling it as hurt he feels it as anger. She could have refused to go, she could have stayed behind. What if she finds someone else, _kisses_ someone else? Everyone will tell her she is beautiful and it will go to her head. He does not want to see her when she gets back. He has to see her the _instant_ she gets in.

Shortly after midnight he hears the carriage pull up and he leaps down from the window seat. It feels as though he has been watching from the window for hours, when it has only been moments, getting up and looking out and coming back down to pace impatiently in a cycle for hours. Having jumped down, he stops himself running to the door and stops for a moment, confused, not sure of his own feelings or how he wants to behave. It is all of a sudden too complex for his mind to handle. He gets back into the window seat and sits there, feigning nonchalance in an agony of waiting, not even sure if she will come straight to his room or her own. He squirms in the window seat, trying to arrange himself in the pose that will look the most careless, the most relaxed, aware of nothing but how tense he feels in every muscle.

He hears her voice outside the door first, something smooth and bright, catches _I promised I’d tell him about it –_ and their father rumbling something in reply. Her off hand tone settles his mood into one of anger, convinced she is just humouring him, and certain that even if she isn’t she is belittling him to father with her choice of tone. When the door opens he turns his face stubbornly to the window.

“Did you miss me?” she whirls in, a breath of dancing light and floating optimism, buoyed up, no doubt by the wonderful time she has had without him. He does not want to answer at first but is far too impatient to hold the silence for long.

“No” he grumbles back, still not looking at her.

“Oh you’re not still sulking are you? How tedious of you.”

She has this air to her voice he is sure he has only ever heard her practise before; something cultured and imperious – as though she really is an adult, and not just pretending any more.

“No I don’t care. Go away”

There is a yawn in her voice when she replies;

“No. Come on, don’t be like that.”

“I’ll be how I want, stop talking like that.” He dares a side eyed glance at her, eyes narrowed. It is a mistake. Something catches in his throat; she is _beautiful,_ almost unbearably so, her cheeks flushed from the cold and some last quivering beads of snow shaking from her hair. She is taking her gloves off, gently pinching at the fingertips, taking such ridiculous care. He cannot help but feel irrationally angry at how many people have seen her like this; he wants to look away again but cannot take his eyes from her bare arms and shoulders, suddenly painfully aware of the shape of her and just as suddenly sick at the idea of anyone else having touched her.

“Like what?” her eyes widen too innocently. He glares at her, turning around properly to do so.

“Like a _lady.”_ It comes out in a snarl – “Like you’re so special and I’m just your annoying brother –”

“You _are_ my annoying brother,” she returns – “And you’re being more annoying than usual. Do you want to hear about my night or not?”

“No.”

“You’re lying.”

He is. He wishes sometimes, not often, but at times like this – that she could not see through him quite so easily.

“It was _wonderful.”_ She goes on regardless, and he thinks he hears just a little bit of spite in her voice, even of exaggeration – “Papa says over thirty people asked me dance – I didn’t even have time for all of them. I hardly stopped all night. You should have heard some of things people said.”

It is not just spite, he realises; she is riding high on all the compliments she must have received, surging through the stars on a wave of her own beauty and perfection. Somehow it occurs to him how fragile this sense of grandeur is, how easily it could break.

“They were lying,” he aims and then fires – “You look terrible”. She looks at him sharply and then just as quickly, looks hurt. He feels a quick surge of satisfaction and jumps down from the window seat – it is easier to be near her when she is not flying so high above him looking down. But then her eyes brim with the hurt, and her chin quivers. She pulls herself back with a little jerk, half turning –

“Well if you’re just going to be horrid –” she takes a few quick steps towards the door. He crumbles inside, takes her arm, holding her back –

“No – wait – I didn’t – I’m sorry, don’t go – I just – you’re beautiful,” he sighs it out, defeated. She does not make it easier, her smile back as quickly as it vanished, twitching at the corners of her mouth.

“I know” she says brightly – “Everyone said so.”

“They can all go to hell,” he glowers. “They can’t have you –” his hand tightens on her arm and he holds her tight, his other hand twisting in her hair. “You’re mine”. He closes his eyes in relief at having said it, ready to shake her if she does not understand. But when he opens his eyes again she is looking up at him, eyes wide and dark, lips slightly parted in a perfect O of understanding as she sees the man in her brother’s eyes for the first time. He realises that he has no idea when he became taller than her but at some point it has happened and here she is looking up at him, her wide eyes slowly closing as the space between their faces falls away and he is kissing her fiercely, like he has never kissed her before, and she is soft and pliant in his arms; she has to be his, he thinks he might die if she is not. They kiss until she is breathless with it and he can feel himself unravelling fast as her breasts heave against his chest. He has to touch, to feel everything, lay claim to every part of her and she whimpers when his hands move, touching her like he has not dared before. When he presses a hand between her legs he can feel her wet through the silk and she touches him back when she feels his hardness press demandingly against her leg. None of this is new, but then it is and they are both wide eyed and awe struck with the knowledge of where it is leading.

“I want –” he manages and she nods fiercely, aware that wherever the sentence was going this was the only part he needed to say.

“Yes,” she replies – “Bed,” she adds. He reaches it before her and she stands for a moment, wriggling out of her dress, never breaking eye contact as she moves. He watches her as though she is a goddess, speechless _for the first time in your life_ she will point out later, a speechlessness which does not break as she gets into bed, straddling him and leaning over to kiss him, the fall of her hair tickling him and obscuring his vision. When she does lean back he looks at her and looks at her, trying to map out every line of her body, every shadow across her skin. A dozen things crowd on the tip of his tongue to come out; all of them too ridiculously sentimental to say to his sister. He can see his own uncertainty in her eyes, the awkwardness and fear that is not going to stop her for a moment any more than it will him. When her hand goes back to his cock he finds himself forgetting how hard he was trying to be an adult and in control of this and hears a desperate, half strangled _please_ escape him. She smiles in a way he will never work out and unfastens him quickly as though realising both her own power and how quickly he could come apart. He feels weightless, gone, she is wriggling, moving over him and then dear god, she is around him, biting her lip but sinking onto him slowly and he reaches for her – for anything he can reach, wanting to touch and touch forever and dear God he is inside her and it feels like coming home; like re-establishing something, like nothing he has known and everything he has always needed, and it is impossible to last like this for long before he is clutching at her, clutching at the mattress, her hand firm and gentle on his mouth to keep the sounds from carrying and he empties himself into her and he is sure later, his heart with it, everything lost inside her in one short moment.

She closes her eyes and he watches a curious set of expressions cross her face until she smiles, leans over to kiss him lightly  before rolling herself to the side and settling with her head on his chest. Only now, putting his arms around her gently, does he really feel like an adult again. He has heard people say this changes everything, and he supposes that it does, and also nothing. Of all the strange sentimental things that have crowded his head the thing to say is obvious and inescapable.

“I love you,” he sighs it into her hair, and she makes a wriggle that is almost a shrug.

“Yes, I love you too,” she says it in a tone that implies _of course._ She twists her head, presses a kiss into his shoulder, finds his already hardening cock with her idle, clever hand and rolls over onto her back, reaching out her arms.

“My turn,” she smiles, smiling and looking up at him dark eyed as though it is a wonderful game to be played until they can both consider themselves the winner.

__x__                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

 **Freaking out about this, nervous that Anatole is just 1, too young and 2, OOC. But I’m hoping any OOC-ness is just attributable to age difference as I did want to make him significantly different in certain ways, idk, just gonna close my eyes and post!**                                                                                                                                                                                                          


	4. Hyppolite, 1799

**Hyppolite, 1799**

It is _not_ jealousy. He convinces himself of it constantly. He just does not like them. After all, he has the right, does he not? They are mean to him, ignore him; actively run away from him if he tries to join in their games and conversations. They stop talking when he walks into a room, looking at him with the freakish synchronicity that makes him feel like an intruder. He cannot help but feel a superiority that is surely more than just the three years difference in age he has over his sister.

But it is unfair. Anatole, even at fifteen, seems to have everything he does not; the looks, the friends, the disposition towards happiness and levity, that easy good humour and life of idle carelessness that he as eldest has never been able to completely afford, try as he might. And he has _her._ Boredom and years of being ignored have given him room to see what everybody else is blind to. He did not want to see it either, but he watches them when they do not know it and it is unavoidable. He has been seeing it now for over a year and suspects he was late to figure it out, thinking them too young and the truth too unlikely.

It is not the kind of jealousy Anatole thinks it is. The one time he thought to make some sly hint at his brother he got laughed at and the most disgusting implication made. He simply could not see his sister in that way and cannot imagine how any brother could. He is not committing any transference of feeling when he feels that they disgust him; instead taking pride in a deep sense of moral superiority and quiet outrage. He keeps it quiet, has done these five years since the idea occurred to him, determined to use the knowledge one day to his advantage, but waiting for the right moment.

Nevertheless it _is_ jealousy, albeit of an entirely different kind. How could anyone not feel left out with the two of them constantly breathing in the air the other exhales? And they are not pleasant to him. His sister barely seems to look at him, and when she does it is with an air of lofty elegance and patronising curiosity that always seems to ask him what he is doing in his own house, let alone deigning to share a living space with _her precious self,_ as he once foolishly said to her. She had just laughed, that airy tinkling sound that seemed to charm everyone around her and did nothing to him, and off she had skipped calling for Anatole. She was always calling for him and he always came, like a faithful dog, if it were not for the fact that he did the same to her and she came at his call almost as quickly. They seemed to think nothing of loudly screaming and laughing their way around the house as though it was not entirely indecent how much time they spent together even if there was nothing else to go on. Sometimes it sounded, when he spied on them, as though they really were speaking another language, though he knew that Anatole’s concept of French did not sustain him through an entire conversation. If Hélène had so wanted to practise, he sometimes thought with an injured air – she could always have talked to _him;_ he was, after all, the more intelligent party. But it was not that kind of other language.

Even when he does catch some of the words in their conversation, none of it makes sense. Everything they say seems to be strung together from in-jokes and references that have been taken down so many twists and turns already as to be meaningless to the casual listener. He knew that they had at one time obsessed over making up words, developing half a language that saw them through both private and even public conversation. Unable to follow, Hyppolite came to the conclusion this was the height of silliness. He would hear them talking about events they could only have made up and can only wonder at the world they inhabit. One stands out particularly vividly in his mind.

They had been staying at their country estate outside Petersburg; it was summer and the air was silver and gold with hay and motes of sunshine. He cannot have been older than fourteen. They had lost him in the high grass in the meadow and he was busy not caring a bit, strolling through the meadow, hitting the tops of the grasses and sending clouds of down and seeds flying off into the blue. He was imagining he was the only person in the world, the ruler of it all, the field all the way to the house on one side and the trees on the other – it was as far as anyone could see and so it seemed, just now, like a perfectly substantial kingdom. He was just starting to take pride in his solitude when he heard voices, not far away from him in the grass, chattering voices, not quite whispering but not quite loud either. He wondered why they did this when they could just as easily run around screaming and laughing with what he often thought was faked enthusiasm. It was as though there was no in–between state for either of them; it was shrieking or whispering, never just talking like ordinary people.

“You remember –” he heard his sister’s voice, the first intruder in his kingdom – “It was the day we flew over the icefields. My horse was silver with blue in his wings.”

“Mine was gold with copper and black.”

“And the stars were coming out and the sunshine and they were all the colours above and below, you remember – we went all the way to the edge of the world where the water falls over into the sky.”

“I remember. This could be the field couldn’t it?”

“It’s a lot _like_ our field. But the flowers are different and ours is more gold. Close your eyes.”

Silence; for a long still moment with a warm breeze tickling the grasses and then they giggle as though a whole conversation has passed wordlessly around them.

The outsider hovers on the brink of their world, poised between infiltration and retreat. Not a word of it makes sense, and for a while he wonders if they are not both completely insane. How quickly, it can all go from a feeling of being invaded to being the invader. Normally he would have disturbed them – just for the sake of it, but this time he feels too great a sense of unreality, a complete lack of comprehension of their words and the world they are conjuring up. It is almost like witnessing something shockingly intimate – only without him having the words to describe or explain what he has overheard to anyone.

He remembers this now, that time he walked away; remembers with a strange sort of shame and sense of failure. He is starting to feel too used to this feeling. It occurs to him now, on the back of his last row with his brother, that there _is_ something he can do about it now that he has seen enough to put into words-even if they are words it will disgust him to say. And he knows who to say them to for maximum effect.

He imagines, with a greater sense of sadness, a world in which he and his brother could have been friends. They are not entirely without resemblance and Hyppolite does not think he has always hated him. But Anatole – Anatole is clearly to blame, ever since he was small he has not given his brother so much as a glance or a word that would convince Hyppolite he looked up to him or was even interested in him. He remembers being excited when he heard that he was going to get a little brother, remembers that his sister had just turned her nose up at the news. But in the end it was more like he had got another sister; Anatole only ever followed his sister around, wanting to play with _her,_ to whisper secrets to her like another girl, to engage so deeply in _feeling_ everything that passed through his life that he did not stop to think about anything and at the same time could not keep a single feeling to himself. It _is_ like having two sisters, or it would be if not for this one thing –

Hyppolite does not know how long it has been going on, and is not sure he wants to. But he has seen enough to know they have long since overstepped any boundaries of sibling propriety. They might even be _in love,_ though he is not entirely certain himself what that entails. It seems to him to have become even more obvious in the short months since Anatole has been going out in society. That it is hard to avoid the glances they give each other when surrounded by other people. It makes him want to scream that those other people do not see it too. People may whisper but they do not really believe it, just like their father, whose worried glances Hyppolite has become quite attuned to – his worry is an unformed thing with no real belief or proof to back it up.

He has not wanted to be the one to deliver this proof. Not until this last altercation. He does not even know what they were fighting over now, just that in the end, rather than shouting at him as Hyppolite would have liked Anatole simply shrugged, smiled, offered up a lazy _n’importe quoi,_ waving the whole argument – and himself, Hyppolite felt – away and leaving the room so breezily he would have liked to strangle him. It was so exactly like the outcome of any argument he would have had with his sister that he is left feeling cheated out of a brother for the thousandth time.

And so here he is, the words _father, I have something to tell you,_  poised smilingly upon his lips and all the last ideas of guilt he might have had washed away and he lifts a hand to knock on the door of their father’s study.

__x__

 


	5. Helene, August 1799

 

**Hélène** **, August 1799**

 

Their father thinks he is good at keeping his expression neutral, and this amuses her. She can see a gleam of smug satisfaction in his eyes when he thinks he has succeeded. It makes her want to laugh – if they were closer, she could have laughed at him for it out loud. She imagines herself as a different daughter giving voice to a gently laughing, lightly loving _oh papa!_ such as she has heard from other girls. If she were different; if he were different. She is uncomfortable in the presence of _ifs._ She wonders if they are a normal family, if other people have normal families; if there is such a thing as a normal family. She wonders it lightly but without a very great deal of concern.

He is doing it now; looking at them with that too carefully neutral expression. She knows it can only be bad news, and has put on her own most guarded expression, fixed like a mask. Anatole- never expecting or prepared for bad news- just has his habitual sunny look of relentless optimism. It is a glow that she basks in while at the same time it makes her heart sink; he is too open, too trusting, she fears for him almost every day. She wonders if she would be like that, if she were younger and a boy and if he would be exactly like her if those roles had been reversed.

“You don’t have to be here,” their father says, looking at her; slightly worried, she thinks.

“I know,” she replies and leaves it at that, doubting that he will press it further. Strangely enough though, he does –

“This doesn’t concern you.”

That makes her _really_ worry. She feels herself start to frown and tries to stop it, stays where  she is, looking up at the prince with unwavering interest and wide open eyes. For the first time in her life it does not work.

“Leave us”.

Finally, she allows herself to scowl. But she does not argue, she never argues. She glances at Anatole quickly, forcing herself to smile; he smiles back but she can see him wrestle with the first flicker of apprehension and then he nods at her, barely perceptibly, and she knows he will tell her everything as soon as he can. She can almost feel him squeeze her hand in reassurance without them needing to do so.

Outside the study door she takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. When she looks up Hyppolite is looking at her from the couch with a curiously unpleasant smile and an   _I – told – you - so_ expression.

“Oh shut up,” she sighs wearily, even though he has not spoken. He raises an eyebrow, innocent, feigning hurt and she sweeps past him out of the room with condescending dignity.

She goes to the library, taking comfort in the solitude of the large window seat behind the green curtain. It is their favourite spot for quiet and secrets, even since they got too old to comfortably both fit on this seat. She curls in, holding on to a round velvet cushion, chewing one of the tassels and trying not to think too hard. She does think too hard, thinks about what could be happening – because something certainly is. She does not want something to happen, anything to change; she is happy just the way things are, or would be entirely so if she did not always have this pressing fear of things changing and the troubling knowledge that they have to.

They had been upstairs, just ten minutes ago, drinking tea and annoying each other, Anatole complaining that she took up too much of the sofa while she pretended to be offended, pretending to hear an insult he did not intend. She had _too many limbs_ he said, and she sprawled them all over the place. She had told him he was being ridiculous, she had just the right amount of limbs but _no,_ he said – _they’re everywhere – like an octopus._ He was just trying to physically rearrange her to give himself room to sit down and it was just as she was protesting –

“Stop it Anatole! I am not a cushion!” that Hyppolite had strolled in, looking pleased about something. She had subconsciously sat up straighter, sparing him a half bored, half quizzical glance whilst Anatole – much less capable of pretence than she was – had looked rather guilty and sat down on the far side of the sofa like a good child.

“Papa wants to see you.” Hyppolite seemed unnecessarily pleased at being able to impart the information.

“That’s a first,” Anatole yawned, already bored.

“You’ve probably done something wrong.”

“Send you to fetch us did he?”

“Not _her_ –” she had noticed a new tiresome trait of his later – to talk about her as though she was not there – “Just you.”

“Well if you’re so eager to be a lackey to someone why don’t you fetch us more tea while you’re at it, there’s a good chap.”

“Anatole don’t provoke it, it’s not worth it –” she shook her head patronisingly, pointedly not looking at Hyppolite, amused with herself – “Come along.”

“I said – but I said just –” Hyppolite tried to object as they set off together.

“Oh shut up,” they had chorused back lazily and for the tenth time that day. It had been alright, everything had been as normal but now –

Now she feels an uneasiness inside, a restless energy she supposes is most unbecoming in a lady. Anatole is always a perfect embodiment of restless energy and enthusiasm and that, it seems, is fine – it is expected in a man, while she is expected to be still and serene and balanced – but not too much so or she will be called cold. She wonders why societal expectations are so silly – for men and for women and knows it can only get worse as she gets older.

It feels as though she has been waiting forever. She breathes on the glass, looking down onto the gardens; draws the shape of the hedges in the mist with her finger. She looks out at the sky, bored, wanting a dress the exact same colour as that blue, thinking she would like that – to wear the sky, it would feel so soft and light. She looks at the faint reflection of her face in the glass, a pale ghost version of herself, touches her cheek with her fingers and feels pleased that she is pretty, smiles at herself in the glass and her reflection smiles back. She always expects it to do something else, every time. She sighs.

She hears the door open, feet on the carpet; she wants to jump down straight away, to run to him to ask what it was all about, not to wait for another minute. But she makes herself stay still; it is hard enough to do and so she practises whenever she can. It _is_ Anatole, she had not doubted it, and something in the way he slips in through the curtain and climbs up into the window seat beside her makes her heart race with anxiety. He moves so slowly, with too little of that usual jaunty air and there is a deep little frown line between his eyes.

“What?” she lets it fall impatiently from her tongue – “What is it?”

“It’s –” he shakes his head as though trying to understand – “Father’s sending me away.”

He says the words but not as though he has any conception of them, and he says them with a smile that makes it all the stranger. She remembers an instance not so long ago, they had been curled up in her bed, nose to nose and he had been calling her all manner of awful and ridiculous names in the same tone as one would usually talk to a particularly enchanting kitten.

_“You can say anything to me if you say it in that voice,” she smiles, yawning – “I don’t think I’d mind.”_

_“That –” he grins – “What we just did was terrible and horrible and I only ever do it with you for practise – for when I find the perfect girl.”_

_“Beast!”_

_“You said I could say anything!”_

_“Yes but – that’s not true is it?”_

_“You’re stupid.”_

_“Anatole!”_

_“Of course it’s true, I hate you to pieces.”_

_“You love me.”_

_“No I – stop doing that!”_

_“You. Love. Me.”_

_“Of course I love you. I’m going to marry you, just you and me forever and ever and ever.”_

_“You’re a fool. You know we can’t –”_

_“Stop it. Stop it – I don’t want to hear it .” He scowls, his voice darkening. She sighs; she wishes just now and then that it was not such a struggle for him to be serious. She is fairly certain that he has_ not _accepted, as she unwillingly has – that they could never marry. She finds herself bringing it up more than perhaps she should in the hope that he will give her some sign that he understands. She ends up just feeling mean and he never does seem to understand. But this, she supposes - this could be her own way of ignoring unpleasantness –_

_“You should, though –” she says, as though she has already said it once – “Any time you have to tell me something unpleasant – you should do it smiling – and in that voice – then it will never seem too awful. Will you?”_

She thinks of that now. He has not had to try it until this moment and so she wonders if that vague uncomprehending smile is for her sake or because he has just not registered what it means yet. She is not sure the smile helps after all.

“Away? Why? Where to? No I –” _I don’t want you to_ she wants to say but thinks for a moment that if she can stop herself it does not have to be true.

“He said –” Anatole squints as though it is hard to remember – “He said I have to go away to school – he’s sending me to Paris.”

“So far! Why?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Did you ask? I would have asked.”

“Of course I asked! He still didn’t say. I think – he implied I’d done something wrong but wouldn’t say what it was.”

She bites her lip. She _knows_ and her heart sinks. But it feels to her like this sinking feeling was inevitable; a part of her has always known this day would come. Hyppolite told papa, he must have, she has always been wary of him, tried to be discreet, but it has been so hard when her heart refuses to believe that it has done anything wrong and she knows Anatole is even more of this feeling than she is. He refuses even to entertain the concept of wrong. It is as ridiculous to him as it is to her, but while she will not just leave it at that and imagine in sunshine and ignorance that the world could just leave them alone, he has been all too happy to imagine just that.

“You could have said no,” she swallows hard. She supposes this is unfair, she _knows_ it is unfair and hates herself for trying to blame him but she _has_ to find someone to blame rather than hate her father and older brother so badly she feels like she could kill them – “ _I_ would have.”

“No you wouldn’t!” he catches the blame in her voice and gets angry in turn – “You never say no to him. I _did._ Do you suppose he listened? He doesn’t like me. Or you, I don’t think.”

“Don’t!” she closes her eyes, feels tears leaking from underneath the lids. She launches herself forward into his arms, almost sending them both falling onto the floor. but he holds onto her and she presses her head to his chest – “Don’t lets fight – I –” she is surprised to find herself crying but once she does she gives herself up to it – “I don’t want you to go,” she says helplessly, giving in. The words seem too small to cover the strength of the feeling but they are the only ones she can find. They have barely been apart for longer than a day. To think of weeks, maybe even months, hollows out her heart and she cannot think of anything better to do than let herself cry.

“I’m – I’m sorry?” he says it in lieu of anything else and she shakes her head because it is not what he needs to say and it is not for him to say. She cannot blame him, try as she will and though she wishes she could do otherwise, she does not really blame father either. Everything, she realises, is the result of a hundred little things all stacked together in a badly built tower all coming down to one pile of rubble. She cannot blame the stones for the collapse, just sits in the ruins and brushes herself off.  

In the weeks that follow they do everything fiercely and more than usual. They find themselves falling more and more often into long games of _we could run away_ and _when I come home I’ll marry you for sure._ She knows that they are make believe and finds herself able to enjoy the whimsy from this point of understanding though sometimes she worries that he does not see it this way at all, that at the time of speaking it he means every word he says.

And so they take long jaunts into their imaginary world, devising new landscapes, creatures and adventures; this is easier because she knows he at least knows this to be make believe. It saddens her when she thinks about it that their games of run-away are just as make believe as this – and so she does not think about it. They live everything in higher focus in this time, touch and kiss and fuck like it is the last time every time, lapsing into melodrama they would never usually permit themselves. Too much of the time they find themselves fighting and this, like everything is more vicious, more feral than before and now, with this deadline looming, it always ends in _I’m glad I’m going, I’m glad you’re going, I don’t care if you never come back!_ It hurts, but it is, she knows, the only substitute for admitting the absolute reverse aloud again. She envisions herself having hysterics on their father almost every day, can almost see herself throwing herself at him crying and screaming and begging him to change his mind. It is in these short weeks that she really learns how to keep her hysterics on the inside. It would not help. None of it would help. Their father – she wonders if he feels guilty – because she notices him smiling at them more fondly than usual, being more than usually indulgent – dropping into conversation as much as he can how short a time it will before Anatole comes home – only three months from now until Christmas he says as though it would please her.

Three months. It feels like a life sentence. She refuses to let herself say anything so stupid out loud. Their father acts as though this is the beginning of something wonderful, but she can only feel as though it is the end. Anatole swerves violently between expressions of a similar sentiment and loud assertions that everything will be fine. She is not sure which she likes less.

The night before he leaves neither of them can sleep, they do not even try to stay as quiet as usual, overcome by a morbid sense of recklessness – what would any of it matter now anyway?

“I’ll write,” she says, late into the night or early into the morning, she is no longer sure.

“So will I. Every day.” She snorts.

“If you do, that will be more than you’ve written your whole life.”

“Well you won’t either.”

“I will. And you have to read them, I’ll do big letters.” They push each other laughing, children again for what she fears could be the last time. She stops, frowns, growing thoughtful, seeing in his frown the reflection of her own.

“What are you doing –” she has been tracing his face with her fingertips, looking at him earnestly in the grey half-light – “Are you committing me to memory?”

“No” she says – “I don’t need to.” But it is not quite true; she supposes that she is.

“It’s not for _that_ long.”

“I know,” she shrugs, says it too lightly – “I don’t want to say goodbye.”

“Then don’t.”

“You wouldn’t be sad?”

“I’d be sadder if you did. Besides you might cry on me. That’s nasty.” She rolls her eyes, pokes him, grows serious again –

“Let’s never say goodbye. Alright?”

“Alright.”

She smiles. This makes it a little easier and she is ready to take a little just now. She catches herself wanting to say _If we never say goodbye you never really left –_ but it is too whimsical, too much of a pretend. She feels, with a kind of shudder, that it is the kind of statement that could come back to hurt her someday. But for now she pretends it just a little and it is a good pretend.

__x__

**So, I originally wrote a substantially different bit in this where instead of just imagining herself having hysterics about everything she actually has the hysterics and lets herself scream and cry on their father and begs him not to send Anatole away – but it didn’t seem entirely in character, not when I imagine she’s been learning to keep her feelings under wraps for a few years already now. I hope this works better! My beta is actively wailing at me for hurting these poor babies.**

**Next time on UTS: Dolokhov!  :-)**


	6. Dolokhov, March 1800

 

**Dolokhov, March 1800**

It had been a bad morning. Even if it had been a good morning, he would probably not be in the mood. He was never in the mood for arseholes like this. Idle days were the worst. Better when there was something to fight, something to puzzle out; a mission, _anything._ Anything is better than listening to these privileged imbeciles brag about themselves, about their lives, about the abilities they do not, for the most part, have. The more they boast, the more he knows he could never be one of them and the more he boasts in his turn in recompense. This knowledge fills him both with pride and a regretful bitterness it is hard to shake.

The day started with a letter from home; his mother’s current continuing ill health, his sister’s continued solitude, _but don’t worry about us, we manage_ she always ends it and it always makes him grit his teeth and wish that he could hate them both- hating himself, hating the circumstances of his life that he can never change quite as completely as he would like to, hating and hating until he has to find a man to fight.

He thought he was going to get one, just after breakfast; and it sloshed relief, like a good glug of vodka through him, down his throat to pool somewhere below the groin. Shostakovich passing him in the corridor with some new recruit, sniffing-

“Just something off the street, ignore him – worked his way up through the ranks.” He says this last as though it is ever so disgusting, the condescension laughing warmly in the air between them, directed quite clearly at him. The man did not even care if Dolokhov heard; perhaps he even wanted him to hear. No, Dolokhov knew, he did not want anything one way or the other. _Filth doesn’t have feelings._ He had heard that too many times. _Who cares if it can hear you?_ He let it go a dozen times a day, does not want to be reduced to ranks for bad behaviour. He gets into enough fights as it is. And he _has_ worked so damn hard, the one man in the damn place that has, and a dozen times a day he wonders if he has even got anywhere.

This time he leapt for the challenge, shoved Shostakovich into the wall and called out a growling challenge. He did not even see the younger man, who just laughed, backing off to watch from a distance.

“Watch the jacket, will you,” the man sneered back, barely concerned, shrugging it back onto his shoulders from where Dolokhov had grabbed him and dusting himself off as though he could catch something – “Never mind it eh? I don’t fight peasants.”

He had held his head up as he always did, and stormed outside into the snow in silence to  put a bullet in a dummy at least, firing rounds across the snow until he ran out of ammunition. The noise and the faint smell of powder were a little calming, but not very. He threw his pistol into the snow angrily, regretted it, pulled it out and dried it off on the inside of his jacket; then he stormed back inside. He supposed he could lie alone in his bunk for a while until the familiar and repetitive rage wore off, as it always did.

He had just reached a point of being pleased by his decision when he got to his bunk. To his lip – twitching disgust and unease, he heard voices from within. This was new. He had never had a bunkmate, everyone finding every reason not to room with him; which frankly suited him fine, even if it did nothing to improve his relations with the rest of the officers. It occurred to him with a sinking feeling that the new recruit must have been assigned to him, in the absence of any other room to go to.

He did not care, he told himself, as he told himself two dozen times a day; he did not give a damn. He swung the door open and slouched in anyway. The new boy was slouched across _his_ bed, holding court to a half dozen officers, bragging as far as Dolokhov can tell about how quickly he had managed to get himself kicked out of school. Dolokhov knew at the first half glance that the boy was everything he had come to most despise; shallow, vain and as full of himself as only privilege could make a person. He was probably titled. Either way he was on Dolokhov’s own damn bed, inhabiting it as though he owned it.

“That’s my bed,” he announced unceremoniously, cutting through the laughter and the boy’s drawling, self-satisfied voice. The dark, glittering eyes flicked up to him lazily, and he found himself unnerved by the beauty of them. He pushed it down. He was probably the kind of wastage who relied on that glance to get away with everything, far too aware of his own appeal.

“There’s another,” he shrugged languidly, flopping a wrist in the direction of the other, identical bed.

“Move.” Dolokhov was implacable; he would not have been in the mood for this arrogant, beautiful child even if he had not had a bad morning to begin with. He looked at that elegant wrist, feeling a surge of desire to break it.

“No,” his rival  let the word drop lightly, amusement flickering around the corners of his mouth, watching Dolokhov now with intent curiosity in the way one might watch an unusual animal perform a trick. The others had grown quiet, the warmth Dolokhov had walked in on shattered, he knew, by his arrival. And he did not care, was glad when they laughed, patted their new friend on the shoulder and said they’d leave him to it. To Dolokhov’s satisfaction, he saw apprehension flicker in those eyes and the boy’s mouth moved uncertainly –

“I say, don’t –” he began. Dolokhov could have filled in the rest – _leave me alone with this ruffian_. But he stopped himself, seemed to think better of it. Closed his mouth and opened it again to amend himself to “I’ll see you later then, eh fellas?”

Left alone, he looked up at Dolokhov insolently. Dolokhov shrugged out of his greatcoat, hanging it steadily on the wall, unhurried.

“Fight me.”

“Really?” A bored sigh, and a casually raised eyebrow.

“Really.”

“You _really_ want to fight me over a bed?”

“It’s _my_ bed.”

“The other one is _identical.”_ He pronounced the last word slowly as though implying that Dolokhov would not know what it meant, a tactic he was all too familiar with.

“Your name?” he let his memory fall back to the new recruit’s announcement of the day before; he made it his business to know these things, keeping them in files in his head to be reached for where needed – “Karagin yes? Kuragin? Something like that.” He knew damned well, but had long since learnt that nothing irritated these people more than somebody not knowing who they were, as though it was every man’s duty to know them and appreciate them.

“ _Kuragin”_ – with a surprising lack of the expected malice, but then – “ _Prince”_ he added, pettishly, and as though Dolokhov would not know what such a creature was.

“No doubt.” He had only really meant to think it, not speak it out loud – “Alright, you’ve got one last chance – get off my fucking bed.”

“Oh, you didn’t ask nicely.”

“Get off my fucking bed, Your Illustrious Highness.”

“Make me.”

Dolokhov grinned. It was almost friendly. The same way that a lion’s grin is almost friendly before it pounces. He grabbed Kuragin by the shirt front and hauled him to his feet, slammed him into the wall and punched. The boy dodged and his fist hit the wall. His second one did not. He was feeling better already. For a few minutes it felt as though beating the tiresome princeling to a pulp was going to be easy. He might even have felt bad about starting a fight with someone younger than him if the boy had not been so despicable. He could not quite remember afterwards how it had changed. They were on the floor and he had the boy pinned, raining blows to the chest and that pretty, detestable face. But his opponent was quick, spitting at him and scratching, _fighting like a girl_ Dolokhov would say later, though if it was the case, he reckoned he never wanted to get into a fight with a girl. Then there was a stinging pain in his balls, doubling him over, giving his opponent enough time to wriggle out from under him, drag him up and hurl him back down, crashing him into the bed that had been the contentious point to begin with.

“You want your bed back?” Kuragin snarled, raging with pain and adrenaline – “Fucking _have it!”_ Dolokhov found himself ready to laugh when a tense, hard fist went into his face. Kuragin was stronger than he had given him credit for, and he could not help but appreciate this, even if he was the one now on his back, the other man straddling him and pounding him with almost more recklessness than he had given out himself.

It was not just recklessness, Dolokhov thought through the sharp, almost pleasant beat of pain. You learned a lot about a man from the way he hit you, and he was used to the typical savagery that lurked behind the mask of class and manners; it had made him despise these people all the more at the same time as helping him learn how to manipulate them. This was different- he knew this, recognised it. This was not just a lust to hurt for the sake of it, more an inability to stop, a brutal internal hurt and frustration that once riled could not go unvented. It was not violence for the sake of it; more a scream of pain in the only way men were permitted to scream. Unbelievably, it seemed that in his own appalling way Kuragin had been wanting to fight something, to get something out, just as much as _he_ had that morning, and possibly for longer than just that morning. He felt, with some alarm, that the boy might start to cry and then, bruised and bleeding as he now was, he would have to be the one to look after him.

He did not cry; just stopped finally, when exhaustion set in, leaning back, with Dolokhov still pinned in a vice like grip between his legs, panting heavily.

“You done?” Dolokhov grinned; he so rarely found himself in this position that he supposed it would be lying if he said he did not rather enjoy the novelty. Kuragin punched him one more time.

“I’m done,” he nodded – “You can have your bed back.” He said it cheerfully as though, Dolokhov thought, he had not just pounded him into it. He closed his eyes, wishing for a different choice of words.

“You beat me,” he said slowly. Kuragin smiled, getting up, walking steadily over to the other bed and sitting down feeling his jaw, doubtless, Dolokhov sighed inwardly, checking to see if all his pretty teeth were still in place.

“Yes,” he replied lightly, shrugging – “You started it.”

Dolokhov opened his mouth to object – to the childishness if nothing else. Then it occurred to him that this _was_ still a child and the child had just beaten him in a fight. He looked up at the ceiling and started to laugh.

“It’s just a damned bed,” he grinned; it seemed all of a sudden rather funny. To his surprise, Kuragin seemed to see it too. He stood back up, extended a hand. Dolokhov used the proffered arm to pull himself into a sitting position.

“Anatole,” the young man said, almost but not quite apologetically- “Anatole Kuragin, never mind the title, eh?”

“Dolokhov,” he grunted back – “Fedya Dolokhov. Take a drink with me?”

Anatole smiles and Dolokhov finds himself wanting to look away. It is disturbingly adorable that smile, the most curious mixture of real and fake. It seems hard to believe there could be anything half way sad let alone tragic behind that smile, but at the same time it suddenly strikes him as hard to believe there could not be. An arsehole like this, he thinks, could be easy to fall in love with whilst never forgetting that he really was an arsehole.

“Yes,” Anatole says mildly, inclining his head in just the smallest fraction of a polite gesture, as though they had not just beaten the living hell out of one another – “Alright.”

__x__

**So, there is another half to this chapter but it was getting really long and I have a Helene chapter coming, set parallel to this one in the time line and which bridges the gap between this point and the previous chapter. So I’m splitting this into two with hers in the middle, I hope it works! :-)**


	7. Helene, March 1800

**Ok so this chapter went so much more miserable than I meant it to and even though I don’t see** **Hélène as the depressive type bits of this start to glide close to what depression can feel like so trigger warnings for that and apologies and promises that it won’t last past this chapter.**

**Hélène** **, March 1800**

 

When Anatole comes home for Christmas and she is not there to see him, she begins to understand and to despise her father more than she thought she even could. It is all so artfully done, there is no way she can think to get around it that would not be entirely incriminating. She has known for weeks, from his letters – and their father has said the same – that he will not be coming home long, only for some ten days from the 21st onwards, and had already worked out that the brevity of the visit was papa’s doing. So then when it is casually suggested to her in mid-December to spend Christmas with great aunt whoever at their country estate outside Moscow, any objection she could come up with would have seemed painfully transparent. The princesses Olga and Sophie are going and a great deal of important people; her aunt is renowned for the splendid Christmas she can put on and doesn’t she know her second cousin Pavel will be there, a charming young man and well connected; and she is not sure if she feels more like laughing or screaming at the ridiculousness of it all.

In the end she just blinks at her father, partially because she knows it to be disconcerting and also because she knows how much she can force back with that quick closing and opening of her eyes. She has been doing it for years, originally to push back tears, and is so used to it now that the tears no longer bother threatening to come. It no longer unnerves Papa as much as she would like; he just smiles and says she remembers second cousin Pavel, doesn’t she, he’s been looking forward to seeing her again when he comes home.

This strikes her as such a monstrous thing to say she can barely control herself, can feel her chest heave at the injustice of such a statement. The words _looking forward to seeing her_ especially ring so brazenly in her heart that she can feel it tighten there as though something might snap. But in the end she smiles prettily and replies –

“Yes, a lot of young men are coming home for Christmas aren’t they?”

She looks at him fixedly, eyes burning until he has the grace to look awkward and turn away, avoiding her stare. Only then does she ask if she may be excused, and sweeps out without waiting for a reply. It is as rude as she can ever afford to be. She has known since she was ten that every expectation anyone has had of her has depended upon her position in society, in the way she comports herself and who she pretends to be. She has been honing her skills in these pretences since even before then and it confuses her to hate having to do it whilst at the same time taking pride in how good she is at it. She almost likes it – working people’s perceptions of her. She feels remarkably disconnected from it; knowing how she is perceived whilst at the same time knowing herself to be something entirely different. She knows this separation of self and appearance leads most girls away from an understanding of themselves, cutting their minds off from their bodies and hearts and having no idea of who or what they are. It is not like this for her, and for this reason, as well as everything else, she knows she plays the game better than they do.  She is well aware of who she is – it is the whole of society, all of those shimmering ribbons of social flux that she can spin so deftly through her fingers, that she is disconnected to. She supposes a girl must be a glittering silk thread weaving into the pattern of the world but, she prefers to be the hoop holding it all together. Perhaps that gives her an over-inflated sense of self-importance, but she decides that she deserves it.

When she leaves her father that day she walks briskly to her room, sits calmly in a chair in front of her mirror and puts her face in her arms and cries. She cries almost mechanically and because she knows that she has to do something to let all of this – this tight burning awfulness out of her heart. She cries until her shoulders ache from shaking and she feels sick and weak and empty. When she looks up again she feels washed out and faded and she hates the way she looks in the mirror, eyes red and cheeks blotchy. _I’m done,_ she thinks; _I’m done, I won’t do this anymore. I can’t._ She feels as though she has cried every day for three months. It is exhausting and dull. She rubs her eyes, dabs a cooling cream underneath them and into her hot cheeks. _So this is how it’s going to be,_ she tell her reflection sternly – _this is how it will be – they’ll keep chipping at me over and over until there’s nothing left and half of me is really gone._ She shakes her head, tries to convince herself this is an exaggeration, that she is just being silly. She wonders what Anatole would say – she knows he would tell her not to be silly, that it will all be well in the end, that things always turn out well. She looks at her reflection sharply as though it speaks to her in his voice – _sister dear, don’t be so silly_ _._

But she thinks it one more time – _this is how they come at me,_ and a little whisper beneath it sneaks up from her heart, ridiculous and dramatic – _this is how I die._ Stupid, she tells herself – she is seventeen and too young to feel so old, so used up. She has spent too much time of late alone and talking to her reflection. She thinks about refusing to go and knows that she cannot, thinks about cousin Pavel and this latest in a long string of attempts to marry her off. She has always known, above all other expectations, about the necessity of her marrying well. It is a weight around her neck, one she sometimes feels dragging her towards madness. She wonders, for the thousandth time, if madness is where she is now, talking to her reflection for lack of anyone else to understand her. She smiles, knowing she has no intention of marrying; not for as long as she possibly can and that the better she plays this game the longer she can hold it off. They can only _almost_ force her, never quite succeeding. She glares at her reflection and hardens her heart into the decision not to cry any more. She can almost hear a crack of ice creeping in.

She thinks about Christmas, about the dazzling round of parties and engagements, paying calls, smiling and laughing and flirting with cousin Pavel. She knows that she will do all of these things. She wonders if she could put her heart into her flirting for once and takes pleasure in knowing she makes a good enough show of it that everybody thinks she does that already. So much so that she has a reputation for merriment and flirtation that people almost speak of disapprovingly – but it the kind of disapproval that comes with so much affection and respect that she is glad of it. She thinks about trying to care, trying to see something in any of the boys they throw her together with. She determines that she really _will_ try. Will try and make herself feel something real.

She tries not to think of Anatole’s face when he gets home and finds that she is not there, that he will not see her for at least another three months. She knows that the idea of _another three months_ is the worst he will allow himself, knows it will not occur to him as it has to her that their father means to do this for as long as he possibly can. She knows herself that it will not be forever, although that hope is as terrible as it is comforting. Hope does nothing for her; it just makes it harder to turn herself more fully to stone. It keeps her alive and keeps her hurting. She wonders when she became so morbid, so depressed; it does not feel like her, more as though a sadder person than she should be has taken up residence inside her. She shuts herself off from it, like everything.

This too, she knows, will not last. Nothing lasts forever and thinking as she is just now, that cheers her.

She _can_ picture his face though, all too well, and shutting her eyes as she does entirely fails to help. He will fall so fast from being excited and happy to be coming home to being bitterly disappointed and this in itself makes her chest flip sickly. He will ask after her with all that capacity for hope shining in his eyes, and then perhaps become angry with her for not being there. He will swiftly switch himself into not caring; only she knows he can do it far more for real than she can. He will just go away at the start of January ever so slightly bitterer than he was before. She wishes she could care about someone else. Not for the first time she wonders what is wrong with her that she simply cannot. If there were someone – someone who took one look at her and saw straight through her and loved her all the same, who did not think that to love meant to possess, someone she could talk to about _everything_ and he would hear her and understand.  She fixes her smile in front of the mirror and keeps it fixed the rest of that day. She wonders if he will still bother to write to her after she has let him down like this, and becomes so certain that he will not that she determines to flirt with Cousin Pavel in the greatest of earnestness.

When she does receive a letter from Paris a week into January she feels bad for her doubts, bad for the bitter but almost real fun she made herself have over the Christmas season. It is a strange letter for Anatole and the angry sentences snap across her chest like tight strings cutting her.

_I’m done with this._ It reads, with no preamble, just angry letters dashed out fast – _This is –_ a choice selection of colourful phrases not all of which she can quite make out. _What the devil happened? Nobody even told me you’d be gone until I got home and then they never said you’d be gone the whole time. I only came back just to see you – should have stayed in bloody Paris! The hell is papa playing at? He said you’d asked to be away but you hadn’t – had you? Why would you do that? He was lying, wasn’t he? He says you’re practically engaged and I don’t believe it. Don’t be. I won’t – I can’t –_

There was an angry mess on the page and a block of black scribbling where words had been repeatedly crossed out. She could make none of them out.

_I don’t want to stay if it’s going to be like this. I’ve got a plan!_ Her heart sank. _I’m going to kick up a storm here, make as much trouble as I can until they kick me out of school and then I’ll_ have _to come home, there’ll be nothing else for it. Don’t marry, don’t you dare._

“Oh for god’s sake Anatole,” she groans out loud, beneath her breath, folding the letter in her hand. It is all so simple for him – and she knows that once an idea occurs to him nothing on earth will convince him otherwise. He never imagines, not for a moment, that any plan he is clever enough to come up with could go awry, that there is any other possible outcome to his actions than the one he wants. For her, every possible outcome other than the one she wants occurs to her as a possibility before she can begin to entertain the idea that it might turn out well, and so it comes as no surprise to her when over dinner a few days later their father announces that Anatole is being removed from school and put into the army. She just smiles and nods and lets him think it is in agreement with this course of action rather than simply confirming to herself that this is what she knew would happen.

She writes back, of course, writes that she would not condone his bad behaviour, that it probably will not go the way he wants it, that papa seems adamant on keeping them apart. She writes that she is not engaged, _of course I’m not engaged! That’s the stupidest lie of all!_ She writes again and again how sorry she is that she was not there.

His next letter is softer and begins with _My dearest sister._ It talks a little of his transference to the army but, like her own letters, seems more guarded than before, more afraid of showing emotion. She wonders if it is because he trusts her less than he did or if he, like she is, is just protecting himself from feeling too deeply. _We could run away,_ he writes and she sighs – _o_ _r you could._ She is not sure if he means it or not and decides to take the safer course of action and treat it like a game as they always have done. When she writes back it is in the way they have always talked of such things, making strange and overly fantastical plans so that he knows it is just pretend and to her relief he understands, writing when he does – and it is of course not every day as they said they would – in the same vein.

Their letters become less frequent than they were before. She confesses in one of the last serious ones that she sends that his letters give her such joy that after reading them she finds herself feeling worse than ever, because she can hear his voice in the words and imagine him here so hard. It feels like she should just be able to reach and out touch him and then feels cold and prickly when she cannot. He admits to her that it is the same and so they take refuge, as they always have done, in make believe and endings to their story that can doubtless never be.

And day by day she finds it does get easier. She sparkles everywhere she goes, glittering in cold pride at her own splendid individuality. The brilliance of her smile is fuelled and sharpened by a strange sadness and anger only she knows she possesses, but who could care when the outcome was so exquisite. Even she is fooled by herself, at least until she finds herself alone in bed each night. Every night she rolls over onto her side, stares into the dark half smiling, waiting for the familiar pressure of a tug at the sheets behind her, the familiar press of weight against her back, his nose pressing into her shoulder, his smile curve against her skin. Night after night she wriggles back in expectation of being joined, of that comforting arm curling easily around her, pulling her close while she grumbles and pretends to hate it. She can hear their voices echo in this room, his whining _but sister!_ and her own happy grumble of objection _go away, stop bothering me, aren’t you too old to be scared of the dark?_ She misses his eternal excuses that they both know amount to nothing.

Try as she might she cannot stop expecting it all, even when night after night it does not come.

__x__

**Sometimes I like to hurt myself and others. Sorrysorry.**


	8. Dolokhov, March 1800

 

 

**Dolokhov, March 1800**

Anatole gets himself quite ridiculously drunk in a ridiculously short amount of time, stubbornly insistent upon matching Dolokhov drink for drink. Dolokhov tries to slow him down, aware that while they may have only a few years between them in age he is far more capable of holding his drink than he perhaps even should be. He has had to be; he still remembers the days he could not bring himself to get out of bed without a drink, days when the burn of bad vodka was the only way of keeping warm. He still feels warm from the drink but is generally a great deal more sober than he would have people believe.

“Seriously though – you  need to stop that –” Anatole appears to be attempting to finish a last quarter bottle of neat vodka without pause. He glares at Dolokhov over the drink and flips him a vicious gesture with his hand. Dolokhov shakes his head, smirks and sighs; it won’t be long before he regrets it, he knows. The boy is stubborn, he has to give him that, and he finds himself horribly dizzyingly distracted by the sight of those lips around the bottle neck, shining in the dim light with vodka and sweat. The bottle flies across the room, empty, hitting the far wall, Anatole raising his hands and cheering himself vocally.

“Yes, and you need to stop that too – who do you think’s going to clean the glass up, hey?”

Anatole looks at him as though he is quite mad.

“Yes that’s right,” Dolokhov sighs, closes his eyes, “there’s no servants here. Think you can hack it?”

Anatole shrugs, though something flashes in his eyes that Dolokhov suspects he would be able to control if it was not for the drink.

“Doesn’t matter if I can or not. I didn’t choose to be here, you know.”

_That_ at least does come as a surprise. It occurs to him that he has perhaps built up too many assumptions about _these people_ and how alike they all are. He has always supposed they don’t do anything they don’t want to do. He does not say any of this; unlike most people he meets, his brain runs ahead of his mouth and he has already moved on to trying to figure out the reasons why this spoiled brat of a boy would be here if he did not want to be before he has even fully processed the idea of a fallacy in his own assumptions.

“What did you do?” he raises an eyebrow as though he does not really care, more curious though than he would like to let on.

“Eh?”

“Well you’re here and you don’t want to be – so what did you do to piss off papa?”

“Nothing,” Anatole shrugs, and bends over quickly to pick a fresh bottle off the floor; but he looks at Dolokhov too suspiciously over the glass and is unable to hide a flush across his face.

“Oh come on. We’re here, we’re pissed, you just beat the crap out of me and – nice going by the way –”

“You started it.”

“Shut up. I wasn’t complaining. I can tell when a fellow’s got something he needs to get out. So what –” Dolokhov decides to take a gamble – “Who was she?”

The look Anatole flashes him is like a dagger thrown across the room.

“What makes you think there’s a she?”

“He then?” Dolokhov raises his eyebrows; could that actually be it? This was getting interesting.

“Ugh, God no! That’s – I’m not – that’s disgusting! Now shut up, I don’t want to talk about her.”

Dolokhov laughs, watching the boy close his eyes in realisation of what he has done, watches the grimace spread across his face, twitching the corners of his lips, curling them and moving on to twitch the edges of his eyes.

“No, let me guess – you got her into a fix, am I right?”

“No! Oh god – no I hope not.”

“Her family hate you? They won’t ever let you see her again.”

“Her family –” Anatole laughs bitterly; it is amongst the least pleasant sounds Dolokhov has ever heard. “Her family _love_ me –” he looks down at his boots, shaking his head, clearly finding something genuinely but painfully funny in the question. “They just don’t like me very much.”

“So, what? She’s too lower class for you? She’s some kind of whore –” Anatole’s fists clench and his lips twist in a snarl so fierce and so sudden that Dolokhov is almost alarmed –

“Don’t you fucking call my –” he bites something back so hard Dolokhov can see his teeth clench; he wonders if the boy might not just take up their fight all over again – “Shut up Dolokhov. Just shut up, alright?”

“No. I’ve got it, you won’t marry her because you’re too up your own arse about your position in society, but you’ve been sent away because you won’t stop seeing her either, is that it? Because if you’re just refusing to do the honourable thing by a girl just out of some pretentious snobbish sense of status I’m gonna have to re-think my re-think of you as a complete arsehole.”

“It’s not that – it’s –” Anatole glares at him, and there are few things Dolokhov likes more than seeing someone really not want to talk about whatever it is they then do not seem to be able to help talking about anyway. He likes this. Getting to the grain of people, working them out, finding the truth behind all of their lies. This time he even feels a little bit bad about it. “She’s not lower than me, alright? She’s the same, _exactly_ the same; will you please shut up about it now?”

He is not a monster. He realises that even pronouncing such a word as _please_ is almost appalling for a boy like this. He accedes defeat with a half nod and wave of the hand, picks up another bottle of his own and raises it across the room in lazy salutation.

They drink for a moment in silence; Dolokhov realises it is necessary; that he can only push this one so far. He is weak, young, not incredibly clever but skilled, he thinks, at appearing to feel things less deeply than he does. He can imagine what a powder keg that could be, and while he wants to poke and prod he does not want to actually blow anything up, not yet.

“So how do you plan to get by?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re in the army, a place in life I suspect you’re not going to exactly excel at – did you think about how you might survive it?”

“I – well I suppose I counted on doing as little as possible and getting by unnoticed.”

“You might –” Dolokhov cannot believe he is saying this – it is the most predictable, elitist reply Anatole could have made and for himself he has never been able to understand or get away with _as little as possible._ But for the rest – “You might want to stick with me,” he finds himself saying.

Later that night, or more in the small hours of the morning, Dolokhov lies in his bed staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep he has become so unused to having to share a room. He always tries to be aware of the other people around him even if he cannot see them, and while he cannot now see Anatole in the dark he is almost certain that he is also lying sleepless, staring at the ceiling.

“Hey Anatole,” he says into the stillness of the room.

“Yes?” comes back, dreamily on a cloud of vodka breath.

“Is she pretty?”

“She –” Anatole does not try to deny her existence this time, too half asleep and, from what Dolokhov can hear in his voice, too sad – “Oh yes,” he replies, smugness laced with sadness. “She’s beautiful. The most beautiful girl I –” his voice breaks. Dolokhov rubs at something he is sure he can feel in his eye.

“You love her”.

The longest silence and then;

“Like I love myself,” Anatole replies, the words sounding like they come from deep down and from miles away, over a span of so many months gone without speaking about her, trying, from what he can guess, to forget all about her. “She’s part of me, Fedya, she’s –” it does not go unnoticed that this is the first time in all their conversation so far that Anatole has used his first name, but it is drowned out by the strangeness of what he says next.

“She’s my reflection.”

It is such a strange thing to say Dolokhov cannot at first grasp what he could mean by it and then, slowly, a crazy sort of understanding trickles into his mind, the most terrible hint of an idea and without really knowing, even, if such an assumption can be right he feels his heart sink for the both of them.

__x__

**I feel like if there’s an end - of – part – one to this then this is it!**


	9. Anatole, Christmas, 1801

**Anatole, Christmas, 1801**

“What are you thinking?” Dolokhov asks, and he drags his eyes from the carriage window to meet those of his friend. He was trying _not_ to think. He was looking at the trees as they went by, numbing out his mind with his forehead on the cool glass, watching the sun on the snow and thinking- as much as he _was_ thinking- that _this_ \- this is home. He is glad he has come back to Russia in the winter, with the sun dancing off the snow like this and this white sky and the smell in the air, frost and leafless trees, sharp and good like a stiff drink.

“I wasn’t,” he replies and Dolokhov’s eyes narrow a little, because he can smell a lie at a hundred paces. He smiles at his friend and feels a sudden great rush of affection, pleased that he is coming home with this – the one good thing he has found since leaving. He shakes his head –

“It’s been a long time,” he amends, and it has. Two years – more than two years. He was fifteen and a boy when he left for the first time, and those brief occasions that he has visited since have not felt like coming home as they should have done. He knows all too well why and cannot help but be apprehensive now. It is an unusual emotion for him and he is wary of it.

“Nervous?”

“No,” he says too quickly, scrunching up his face in disgust. “Of course not. Don’t be stupid.” Dolokhov smiles, too knowingly, and Anatole looks away. His heart is a rattling beat of excitement thudding in time to the carriage wheels but at the same time he is suspicious – _what if it’s just like the last time and the time before? What if she isn’t there? What if she doesn’t care anymore?_   _What if she really is married after all?_

It was unexpected, the invitation home, after all this time. He has never been so good at looking ahead or planning, better at adapting to whatever was currently occurring to him and so, even though it should not have been a surprise to know that he could just come home now that he was fully an adult it still is.  And to know that he does not have to leave soon this time – he has not really begun to work through everything it could entail.

It was Dolokhov who pointed it out to him, of course. He had been terribly drunk – well, they had both been, though Dolokhov never seemed to be affected by it like other people were. On the night of Anatole’s eighteenth birthday when they found themselves alone in the early hours and struggling into bed. That was the moment Dolokhov chose to tell him he was going home to his family for a while; it had been over a year for him as well after all. He had scowled, as the information crept slowly into his inebriated brain, and pouted when it began to make sense.

“But – I say, must you? I shall miss you, you know.”

“Well, why do you have to?”

“What do you mean?”

“Come with me.”

“I –”

“Of course you can. You’re eighteen now. Write home and just tell them you’re coming. They can’t _make_ you be anywhere anymore.”

“But –” he had stopped, frowned. It was true, and after all he had not even tried to come home in a year, those early visits had left him with such a sense of dissatisfaction, almost betrayal that he had decided to not even try. Hélène had sent him a furiously angry letter about it, which he had ignored and in the last half a year she had barely written at all.

But then, with this new understanding dawning on him, he had written home and been surprised to get a letter from father expressing not only willingness to have him back, but he seemed actually pleased to hear from him. Leaving it so long seemed to have had an effect he had not expected. The only downside was one he could not even bring himself to mention to his friend.

“She didn’t reply, did she?” Dolokhov says now, as though reading his thoughts. It has been comforting – having someone else who can do this. His sister had always known what he was thinking, and he supposed he has grown lazy from never having to finish a sentence for someone to know where it was going. He had been fantastically unpopular during his brief time in school, gaining friendship and notoriety only in the weeks leading up to his expulsion. But with Dolokhov it had been easy again, not that he could tell through intuition like Hélène could, but because he was sharp enough to cut straight through any barriers a man might throw up around himself- and he had never been consciously good at such defence mechanisms anyway. He glares at Dolokhov;

“No,” he replies, shortly. Dolokhov nods.

He had written so excitedly to Hélène when he knew for sure that he was coming home, and been left raw and stinging from her lack of reply. He could only imagine the cause to be displeasure on her part and was left now with no idea of what seeing her again would be like.

“It’s not what you think it is,” Dolokhov says, determined on pressing the point.

“What _do_ I think it is?” Anatole’s lip curled, not wholly pleasantly.

“You think she doesn’t want to see you. That she didn’t reply because your letter struck her as bad news. Did it not occur to you that she’s just defending herself? How many times do you think she’s had her hopes up only to find you didn’t come home after all, eh? And when you did how many times did your dear papa make sure she wasn’t there?”

“You don’t – you can’t know that. You don’t know her.”

Dolokhov bites his lip, giving Anatole that look that makes him feel painfully younger.

“I might. I know you.”

Anatole narrows his eyes. He does not want to think about that – about Hélène existing in a permanent state of disappointment and disillusionment. He would rather get angry over her being happy without him and thereby imagine that she _is_ happy without him. Still, he has become used to Fedya’s levels of perception, and knows how rarely he has been wrong. He remembers how it started, only a couple of months after they met. Everyone was surprised at their friendship when all anyone had witnessed was the antagonism of their first meeting. But then, when they had firmly disabused everybody of the notion that they were enemies, people had begun to accept them almost in the way one would a couple. The friendship had even had the added effect of the men’s estimation for Dolokhov changing, slowly at first, steering away from that patronising distaste Anatole had first observed to a level of respect that was almost higher than that which they felt for him.

He forgets what country they were in. They had been out somewhere, on their way back to barracks. It had been autumn, he remembers the leaves and the heavy, almost spicy smell on the air. Talk had turned back to home and he had found himself expressing himself for the thousandth time in a way he had only found he could to this one man.

“If you could just meet her –” he was saying – “I know you’d love her. But everyone loves her. How could they not? But they don’t know her, nobody does, I would have you know her – for real – I’d – what?” he broke out of the reverie, the eternal dream of her because he noticed an expression of dreadful sadness  flash briefly in his friend’s face

“What is it?”

The expression vanished quickly, pushed away. He never ceased to be impressed at how easily Dolokhov seemed to do that – to hide his feelings, keep them from his face beneath a mask of indifference. It almost made him laugh that, different as they so completely were, Dolokhov could actually remind him of Hélène in this respect.

“Nothing,” Dolokhov said quickly – “You love her – that’s – when two people love each other and they can’t be together, I –” Anatole could see it made his friend sad, angry; some such emotion that he did not want to speak and something else too that he could not so easily read.

“You know we can’t –” He had to actively bite his tongue. There were some things that could not be told, even to as good a friend as this – “because – well –” it was like getting in position to dance, and he would dance around this again and again if he had to.

“Yes I know,” Dolokhov nodded, quickly, saying it as casually as he might comment on anything – “because she’s your sister.”

He had not meant to stop still, and it seemed quite by accident, quite a mistake that he had suddenly stopped walking. He had looked at Dolokhov for a long silent moment, during which he could hear himself breathe, hear the wind clatter the trees across the field. For the hundredth time he found himself thinking _what would Helene do?_ But he could not do that – he could not lie and deny it now.

“For god’s sake, don’t –” he closed his eyes. It came out in an unmanly whisper. It had been hard enough for him to realise he could not speak of this to just anyone, harder still to understand that love could ever be criminal when it hurt no-one. But when he finally dared to meet his friend’s eyes he realised that asking _this_ man not to tell was an insult to him, and he stopped.

“How did you ever –” he tried again, frowned.  He was so sure he had never said anything that could lead anyone to this accurate and terrible guess. Dolokhov sighed, put a hand on his shoulder and shook his head.

“It’s safe with me, my friend.”

 All of a sudden a startling awareness had crept between them and he had felt it like a curious and unexpected tug at the ribs. He had never expected to see the sky reflected in anyone’s eyes but his sister’s, but in that moment he had seen it in the tenderness aimed at him in that frank blue gaze. That hand which he was so aware of upon his shoulder moved slowly to his neck and he felt himself blush and surrender himself to the other man’s kiss. And then he had understood the other feeling he had seen so briefly flash in Dolokhov’s eyes, and was able to return it just a little; knowing as Dolokhov knew too, that it changed nothing. It was no replacement for his love and he understood with perfect simplicity that there was room in him for this too, a gentle accompaniment to every other feeling.

After that he had held nothing back and his heart which he had so clumsily tried to lock up, opened again in all of its entirety.

“You may be right,” he says now, non-comitally, shrugging. He looks back out of the window as the fields start to give way to houses, not wanting to know what Dolokhov might be thinking himself, knowing that everything is  about to change and unsure if it is for the better or worse. They do not speak again until the carriage pulls up and he realises, looking up at the house, that he is not even slightly ready for this.

“Well then –” he says, brightly – “This is me.”

He can see Dolokhov fighting to restrain something in his face but all he says, blinking several times and then stopping, echoing perfectly calmly as he looks up at the house through the window –

“ _This_ is – you?”

“Well, father’s at any rate I suppose.” Anatole shrugs, not able to see what his friend is staring at so curiously. “Do you – want to come in?”

Dolokhov sinks back into his seat across from Anatole, clearly forcing himself to look away. He almost – Anatole thinks, though it is silly – looks afraid, or ashamed, and for himself he cannot understand why.

“No, that’s –” Dolokhov speaks slowly – “Not today, eh? You’re better off doing this without me, and –” he exhales slowly, “I should be getting home myself.”

“Alright.” Anatole nods, closing his eyes, trying, trying, trying to feel prepared for this – “I’ll send you a message, next couple of days.”

Dolokhov nods, smiles tightly, his eyes distant. Anatole opens the door and jumps down from the carriage. Here the snow has been swept away and his boots crunch on the icy gravel. He starts up the stairs and hears a footman offer up,

“Welcome home, your Excellency,” which is strangely warming but to which he does not respond.

Almost two years in the army and now coming home he finally feels as though he going to war. He nods slightly to the footman and steps through the door.

__x__

 

 

 


	10. Dolokhov, Christmas, 1801

**Dolokhov, Christmas, 1801**

 

As the carriage pulls away he feels ridiculous for not having acted more sensibly. He comforts himself with the fact that Anatole has no clue at all of what the problem was anyway. _Stupid!_ He berates himself. _Stupid, stupid!_ As though he could not have guessed what Prince Anatole Kuragin’s house would have been like. He shakes his head at himself, struggling beneath a storm of feelings, glad he made the decision not to go in, not today.

He tries to imagine how Anatole would react to seeing where and how his family live and at first tortures himself that the idea does not bear thinking about before he realises that Anatole would not care. He would not judge or sneer or find anything strange in their differences of circumstance. He thinks that when he met the boy two years ago, he might have done – but even then – Anatole does not _see_ the differences between people like that, and it is simultaneously endearing and frustrating.

The most frustrating thing of all, he supposes, was falling in love with the boy in the first place. It took him longer than he would ever have liked to realise that this was exactly what he had done. He does not know why or how or what the hell he thought he was doing, but it happened and that is all he can say about it.

At first he knew better than to expect anything would come of it. There was every reason to think that nothing would. Anatole was barely more than a child. He was in love in a way Dolokhov neither could nor would want to interfere with and he seemed to be vehemently interested in only women. This last was the one that he saw through first – it was _too_ vehement, too defensive. Well, he supposed it was bad enough for the boy to love a girl he could not have without risking Siberia doubly by liking men as well as women. But he did; he admitted later he always had, and could see no reason not to that was not ridiculous.

Everything was simple to Anatole, and nothing worth over-thinking, apart from those few things – that _one_ thing – that he could not completely have. The innocent clarity in those eyes demanded that one love him and there was nothing to be done about it. He had never imagined it would hit him like this, imagined even less that he could be happy being second best, like, as he knew he had to be. He could hardly compete with this girl he had not met – he knew that without even seeing her. Too many days spent hearing of nothing but her beauty, too many nights spent hearing the boy cry for her when he thought nobody could hear. He half wanted to hate her but could not quite get there; lingering instead at a vague unwillingness to meet her finally.

Everything would change now; he could not doubt, wondering if Anatole would even remember to contact him as he had promised. As the carriage pulls up on the corner of his street he pushes it all as far as he can to the back of his mind.

Home is as it had been since he had been old enough to keep the family off the streets; a narrow house in the middle of the terrace with a single candle burning in the window. It is sad and cheery all at once, that candle, its light doing little more than illuminating half the window. He looks at the faint orange light, digs his hands in his pockets, looks up at the sky in the gathering dark and tries the door. It swings open and he stomps the snow from his boots at the edge.

They are so pleased to see him it is almost embarrassing. It feels like walking into more than just a room of two people to hear his name called so enthusiastically and his sister rush to him as he stoops to come through the door. The glow on their faces spreads further than the candle at the window and he cannot help but feel insufficient to be the cause of so much happiness. He only ever feels this here, amongst the people he tries to help the most, knows that however much he can send them it is not enough, that he can never help as much as he would like; a sense that is only sharpened by how grateful they always are, how much they tell him he does for them and how much less than what he does they ever expect. He wishes, just now and again, that they could be a little less accepting of their lot in life, as he has never accepted it. It is only when he is back with them that he wonders if he has done wrong in this.

He falls into place amongst them beside the small fire as though it is a place kept open every day that he is not there; it is both comfortable and disturbing. He searches them and the room for signs of change – anything in their faces to suggest unhappiness or a distress they stubbornly will not tell him about. He knows they do this. He finds nothing. It occurs to him that the fire itself is a luxury, put on for his comfort and to try and fool him into thinking that they have this level of warmth at all times. But he can see the blankets heaped on the back of his mother’s chair and the layers of shawl his sister is wearing and knows, with an internal sigh, that this alone is their usual protection against the cold. He determines, as they talk animatedly of nothing, to send more, to help more, to be home more. He knows he determines this every time he comes home and feels like a disloyal wretch.

He tries not to compare, but he knows he has been comparing all his life and the higher his own circles of acquaintance grow the poorer his own family seem, even when he does nothing but improve their circumstances along with his own. He has seen the way the people around him waste food and heating, seen the way in which they live and their casual indifference to it. He knows that here meat is a luxury and tea leaves thrice used and that these things themselves are luxuries compared to what he had tried to become accustomed to as a child. He catches himself thinking about what Anatole has come home to, what he could be facing now and realises, with a twisted  knot of feeling, that his own homecoming is probably easier.

He smiles at the animation on his mother’s face as she talks without end to him, delighted enough to forget her tea, holding the cup for its warmth without drinking. He knows that Galina is watching him the same way he watches them, thoughtfully, looking for change, trying to read him as he tries to work out the two of them. He wishes without end that there could have been more opportunities open to her; knows that she is clever and quick witted and that even without looks to go on could have done well in society. But she will never see society and when she claims to be glad of this he never can tell how truthful she is being.

He asks his mother as least a half dozen times if all is well, if there is anything he can help with, how they are and she answers only with eternal optimism and delight at his mere presence. He does not enjoy such delight, but is glad that she is happy at least. She goes to bed early and he kisses her, taking the tea things out to the kitchen and coming back to find his sister on the floor by the fire, huddled up close in one of their mother’s blankets.

“She seems happy,” he sits down beside her.

“She’s pleased to see you. We both are. Take a blanket.”

He looks quickly at the fire, which is dying, and almost asks her why not top it up, but he knows why not, and refuses to embarrass either of them by asking. He takes a blanket and sits next to her on the floor.

“And you, little sister?”

“I said we both are –” she grins at him with dark, chipped teeth, it is sweeter than it should be – “What more do you want, eh?”

“And you –” he falters, knowing she will be more honest than their mother is and not sure, after all that he _is_ ready for it – “There’s really no more I can help with?”

She shrugs, an awkward crooked gesture –

“There’s a draught coming in through your room – but I sleep in with mama these days so it’s only you’ll be cold.”  


“Oh is that right? I’ll fix that.”

“You fixed it last time. It came back – there’s a leak sometimes in the kitchen too, when it rains.”

“I’ll fix that too. And get more wood in so you can run that fire every day, eh?”

“We already –” she begins stubbornly, but she jerks her chin just a little too high and he catches her eye. She shakes her head- “Alright then. If you can – and if you tell me who they are.”

“Who what are? What?” This takes him by surprise.

“Something’s changed. You’re different.”

“I’m always different. It’s been awhile.”

“Not that kind of different. You’ve met someone. I can tell.”

“How can you tell? No I haven’t – oh, shut up!” he pushes her, gently. She laughs and he knows that somehow she has caught him out. It occurs to him in fact that she has used the same tricks to do so that he has used himself countless times on others.

“Well?” She gives him that look again, dark eyed, almost fey – “Who is he? Or she? You know I won’t tell. They’re special, aren’t they?”

He opens his mouth to laugh _who would you tell?_ But this would be too close, even in humour. He knows that she has books for friends and newspapers for society.

“ _He–”_ he begins and sighs, aloud this time. It occurs to him that the question of gender, criminal as it is, is not even the worst of his problems. And what can he say that will not make his sister sad? That he loves someone else? That to say there was an issue of class between them would be like saying the stars were too far to touch.

“He _is_ special,” he says at last – “At first I thought in the worst possible way –” and then he talks. He talks long into the night, his sister listening as though his tales are the most exotic of all. He talks about their first fight and how much he disliked the boy, talks about the troubles they have got up to together, making her laugh with the tales of their exploits. He even tells her to some degree of that first kiss in the autumn leaves and the nights they spent together in what amounted to a curious kind of innocence, Anatole so young, so uncertain when it came to men, so trusting and so beautiful.

“Beautiful?” Galina smiles – “Like a girl?”

“It’s the right word,” he nods, and it is. He tries not to let slip that sense of absolute tenderness he feels both now and connected always to those nights where they would fall asleep curled up together, Anatole relaxed enough to break his heart word by word talking about _her,_ always about her, her eyes, her smile, the soft and the sharp of her until he could almost see her standing over them in the bed they had fought over not ever imagining that they could share. But it does slip out and more than he means to.

“He loves someone else,” his sister says, half a question, half not.

“Yes.” he frowns.

“But he loves you too.” He thinks about this as though he has not been asking himself the question for over a year now.

“Perhaps,” he says, then forces himself to smile for her sake – “Yes of course, how could he not?”

She laughs, and this he realises is for _his_ sake and not at all because she believes in the smile he only forces for her sake.

“Of course,” she says and her smile fades as quickly as it came;

“You will be careful, won’t you Fedya?”

“I’m always careful.”

“No, listen to me! I’m serious. You mustn’t –”

“My dear little sister, don’t you think if I was going to get myself sent to Siberia I’d have done it by now?”

“Now I didn’t mean that! I know you –” she shakes her head- “I meant of getting your heart broken, stupid.”

“I won’t.” He grins and he holds the grin more confidently than he feels, knowing she is watching him closely, knowing that he is trying to stop himself thinking how too late for that he already is.

He lies awake that night looking out onto the sky, wondering if he can stretch to getting curtains on these windows as well as the repairs that are needed on the house. The sky is clear and bright in the wake of the snowfall, everything washed clean. He wonders at that sky, starting fresh again every night, the rain and snow polishing it to that shiny obsidian studded with stars. He thinks about what he has got himself into and wonders what will come of it; _dear god what  mess, what a bloody mess,_ he thinks. He thinks about Anatole and where he could be tonight, if he is with her, if they can have fallen back together so easily. He supposes that they must have done, knows they are meant to be together and cannot be sad about it. To be sad about it would be the most incredible level of selfishness and he cannot reach that. Neither does he have any intention of feeling sorry for himself; he banned himself from self – pity forever a long time ago.

He looks out at the stars, picking out first one and then another, each with its irrefutable place in the sky. Nothing out there changes its course and everything, it seems, knows its place. _Everything in nature,_ Dolokhov thinks – _everything except me._ For what has he ever done other than rail against his place and position? When has he allowed himself to stand as still as a star and let the world change around him? No he must not, he cannot; he has to be in motion changing it all around him. Anatole, he realises, is the star, expecting everything to fall into place around him, unable to accept anything otherwise, and shining. Oh yes always shining. Tonight the sky and the man seem to Dolokhov equally as out of his grasp.

But it does not stop him hoping. It does not stop him reaching. He will reach forever if he has to. He can be pulled forwards, always more and more, but there is no power down here or up there that will hold him back. _I’ve got you sky,_ he thinks – _I’ll change you yet, before you ever change me, I’ll have you!_

And the sky looks down and does not care.

__x__


	11. Anatole, Christmas, 1801

 

**Anatole, Christmas 1801**

 

It occurs to him to wonder for the first time if he has ever in fact seen every room of the house. It does not feel like coming home, stepping into this big bright place that he feels he would half like to explore. But then he finds himself uncertain if it is that the place that seems strange, or himself. He finds himself almost introspective on returning to this place he once lived in as a boy, wondering if and how he became a man in less than three years away. It is impossible to catch oneself in the act of growing but he knows, somehow that he has. He wonders if we are ever the same person two years later, or if it takes longer and if so how long does it take to become someone else? No, he decides; he is not sure he has changed at all, not really. The thoughts collide and confuse him and he shakes them from his head as he strides through into the front lounge. It is a further relief – though he almost feels bad about it – when the only faces he sees are his brother’s and father’s, looking up at his approach and breaking into smiles. He finds himself ready enough to ignore the rapid heartbeat that thuds to an anxious _where is she, where is she?_

It is perhaps the only time he can think of, or will ever remember afterwards, when his father welcomed him with open arms. If there is any reticence in Prince Vasily, any uncertainty as to how pleased he is to receive his younger son back into the family, he does not show it. Anatole tries to remember the last time his father ever hugged him and cannot dredge the memory up. Certainly he suspects Hyppolite has _never_ hugged him before in his life but he does so now as though in genuine hope that any wrongness between them has been erased by this passage of time. In his brother’s lack of reticence and his surprisingly ready smile Anatole finds himself trusting him almost immediately and there is not even the moment of doubt he had imagined there would be, no curious eyeing of one another and unspoken question as to whether or not they will even embrace and they do and it is strange and pleasant. They slap each other on the back as though they have missed each other and for those few and maybe only seconds they are brothers as they both suppose they might have been under different circumstances.

And then there is a little rush of cold air, shivery and tingling, spiking at the back of Anatole’s neck and a crystalline voice from the doorway, a smiling, cut-glass voice saying,

“Well, hello.”

When he remembers this later it will be in a rushing rainbow of slow motion; he turns at the pull of that voice as though he is on a string and his arms drop to his sides slowly, vaguely registering that he can feel Hyppolite deflate, any exuberance his brother has had falling from him like flowers from the hands of a startled girl. He hears his brother sigh only just audibly, and he goes back to his place on the couch. He is mercifully and awfully aware of his father still watching him benignly, and so he does not let the easy smile drop from his face when he looks at her.

But how terribly hard it is to keep that smile, to keep his face neutrally pleased. Later he will think of this, bizarrely and illogically, as the moment they first met; and it really is as though he has never seen her before. But then has he? This woman in the doorway is different from the girl he left behind in a hundred tiny ways. He does not remember her poise, that smile, the condescending merriment in her eyes, that mask of smiling indifference – these were all things his sister had just been practising when he left, but has perfected now into fixtures of her womanhood. He feels almost afraid of her.  Even her voice is different, more polished, sparkling in the light, clear and shining, her arms folded coolly across her chest and he can tell those skirts which gently sweep the floor behind her have not caused her to trip or curse with impatience in a long time.

For a moment it is unreal; he finds himself wondering who she is. He has talked about her every day, every night for almost two years – ever since he found someone who would hear him; but he wonders now if this can really be her. He has spoken of her beauty without fully remembering every line of her face and he wonders, looking at her now, if this was what she always looked like at all. For half a heartbeat he thinks he could discard her entirely, close off his heart to such cool smirking perfection and in the second half of the heartbeat he falls in love for another first time. With the falling he remembers, remembers everything and wonders how he can have had even that moment of not knowing her – it seems so simple all over again – she is his sister and she is his. It is instantly impossible that there could be any other truth.

And all of this goes through his mind in the space of half a minute; the longest half minute he has ever lived, and he remembers that he has to move, to touch her, to speak to her and all of a sudden what was briefly so simple is intensely complex all over again. He stiffens, abandoning the easy, unusual familiarity with which he greeted his father and brother, and approaches her as though he would a stranger; with a swagger he has only recently begun to affect and suddenly feels himself in need of. He tries to remember what he ought to say and the only word that will come out through his smile is –

“Sister,” and he takes her hand as though to kiss it, becomes confused and stands for a moment just holding her hand in both of his. Her skin is so soft and so familiar and a host of memories wash back over him, unwelcome beneath their father’s gaze. He finds himself fixated upon a curl of her hair falling against her neck and towards her swelling bosom. He finds himself having to rein in his breathing, looking at the fall of her hair like that, squeezing his eyes shut against the rise and fall of her chest. If he embraces her as he knows he must, she will know more than he would like, and if he does not their father will wonder why. He angles himself awkwardly, enveloping her in the necessary embrace quickly, kissing her cheek without looking at her; noting with interest that she is just as brief, as tense as he is, something regretful in the way her hand rests on his arm so formally. He lets her go quickly, wishing too hard that they were alone and he could crush her close with easy abandon and never let go again. In his mind he sees himself doing just that and it takes all of his willpower – a force he never much likes to exert – to step away.

“You’ve grown,” she says, smiling, in that same cool-water voice. She is a stream and he is parched with the need to drink, prickling with the urge to jump in. He cannot work through the look in her eyes, cannot fathom her at all.

“You haven’t,” he retorts, neutral, always neutral. He can see their father smile out of the corner of his eye, watching them benignly and evidently pleased. Her smile widens and she sweeps past him to stand by the fire, placing a pale hand on the mantelpiece, poised as though she is having her portrait painted. He tries not to watch her too closely but still sees that the press of her fingers against the marble is tight and that she watches him almost constantly but surreptitiously as their father talks, announces the plans he has for them tonight, the huge rounds of welcome home parties and balls that have been set up, the people Anatole will need to call upon over the next few weeks and all of the business of becoming re-acquainted with society that will be his life – he realises-in the lead up to Christmas. And then with Christmas itself – his heart sinks as he realises the way their father has planned his way around what must be to him just another in a long line of problems to be solved. If it was not for the briefly raised eyebrow his sister throws him he might have despaired altogether. There is a certain amount of _I told you so_ in that eyebrow – even though she has not, they have not even communicated in months and the fact that she can do this, even with everything standing between then now gives him hope even if the gesture is a half hopeless one. _You see?_ It says – _it’s all been plotted out this way, I knew it all along._ There is a sigh in it, almost, a dull understanding that their father and circumstances will all try their hardest to keep them from any chance of spending real time together and yet in spite of it all he finds himself smiling. It is not the smile their father thinks it is, one of pleasure at the plans being outlined, it is at despite their few words being no real communication at all they have fallen back into mute and mutual understanding all the same and nothing to be done about it.

And it is this too; a smile because she is beautiful and his and, in spite of the brief fight he put up against it - he is in love.

__x__


	12. Hélène, Christmas, 1801

 

**Hélène** **, Christmas, 1801**

She stands on the edge of the lawn looking up at the sky, at the whiteness of that lawn spreading down before her. Everything is clear and crisp and clean on the afternoon before Anatole’s return. She watches her breath stream out onto the air, marvelling at the stillness that only comes with such whiteness. What a world, she thinks, what a pure untouched world it seems – and what a lie it is with its muddy green and slush such a short way beneath the snow. _I belong here_ she thinks; I belong in this clean white sparkling lie of a world. How perfect, she thinks, the unblemished stretch of lawn is and how easily trampled, one touch, one footprint and it is sullied, gone from sacrosanct to crushable in the space of seconds. _Oh yes_ , she thinks, _yes this too I can feel_.-

It is like being trapped in a vast, white, never-ending room; straight jacketed between the sky and the snow and such stillness as makes her wish she could scream aloud and shatter it. She has had dreams like this and in the dreams she can scream, cracking the sky and waking up to realise that a thin croaking sound is squeezing its way out of her throat, swallowed by the air.

She smiles, a knife edge gleaming in the sparkling white light. The sky frightens her when it is so white. The snow has scrubbed it so clean. She tries to think better thoughts, to feel clean like that sky. A blank slate, some might stay, a fresh start, a new day, so much hope, so much potential, so much beauty. She tries to find that cliché of clarity in her own heart, in her soul if she has one, that the bright beautiful day ought to inspire. But the clarity she finds is the one she puts on; she has had to become the girl she pretends to be inside and out and sometimes she almost believes it, hanging on to these fantastical, sweet-spun structures of self as substitutes for exploring the girl beneath.

She does not want to know that girl, she thinks; she does not need her, especially not today. Not that today is special. She is, she reminds herself, indifferent to her brother’s return just as he has been uninterested in returning for almost a year now. She has no idea why she feels such a need to keep calm. She remembers that girl of two years ago – not even that long. The girl who cried. The girl who raged inside and almost out. She remembers that savage internal rage and distress, that constant call of _why?_ that clamouring at the heart. She has put it away, found a locked up place for it. She tried to slough it off like a cloak, to burn it clean away, but she was not quite good enough for that. Perhaps it is a failure. But she does not see herself as someone who fails. When distress comes, she has since realised, it is never a question, as one mostly hears it out loud, of _What’s a girl to do?_ It is a question of what’s a girl to _be._ She knows who to be and when and for whom, even when she needs to fool or amuse herself. _What self_ , she snorts inside and there it is; the bitterness, the spike that drives up out of the locked box to stab her through the wood and prick the heart she still has after all.

She wonders if she can reflect the spooky white of that sky in her eyes, looking up, hands clenched together in their gloves, the nibble of cold at her nose. Sensation, she thinks, that can be a way out. She has tried it – tried to enjoy contact, kissed boys, gone further than she should mostly to see if she can make herself love it, wanting to love it, risking just a whisper of slander to see how far she can take it. But it has never been more than mildly disagreeable, amusing her for the power she can then hold over these foolish boys but not coming close to touching her. But then, that feeling of strength, of control – that at least has brought her back to try again, whittling and refining her understanding of power into something she can wield. She digs her fingernails into her palms beneath tables and behind her back, seeing how perfect she can keep her smile all the while, how blithely she can carry a conversation whilst seeing how much pain she can give herself at the same time. She finds herself intoxicated by how deeply she can affect a man while she leads him to think she feels something she does not, almost enjoying her own numbness.

She thinks about perfection, about reputation and the fragility of balance. She looks out across the snow, eyes shining at its flawless perfection and takes a merciless step forward. She takes a round of the garden, enjoying the crunch and the brush of snow, the knowledge of ruining her skirts and the snowfall, feeling a pleasure in watching the destruction of that previous perfection that is both childish and grim. There is satisfaction in destruction, she thinks, in the ability to say _I did that_ and be able to fully view the effects.

Anatole, she knows, takes pleasure only in the action and has no ability to even see the effects thereof. She catches herself wondering what he will be like, if he will have changed, what it will be like between them now, if he still – she stops herself before she goes too far. She is relieved when she hears her father’s voice calling her back inside, tearing her away from her thoughts and the trammelled snow of the lawn. But she looks back one last glance at the flurry and the wreckage and smiles, almost proudly.

She makes herself come late into the drawing room, on purpose of course; although she does sit before the mirror too long making certain that she is perfect, though why she feels the need to be she does not dare ask herself. She reminds herself it is not worth it, not just for a brother. But she _is_ perfect; she notes it to herself on her way down the stairs, conscious with every step of the picture she must make and pleased with it. The dress is sky blue and white, sweeping like a cloud and that white she hopes indeed to be reflected in her eyes, the clear glaze of sightlessness.

But it cannot last. She had been so sure that it could. She had not counted on finding a young man in the drawing room in place of the boy she remembered. She should have thought of it, should have known he would grow more than she had; he was young when he left. And now he is taller, broader and somehow more finished than before; frighteningly satisfying somehow, when every young man she has met these past two years has left her with a feeling of overwhelming dissatisfaction. And his eyes have changed; dark now and glittering, facets of the present and the past dancing in those eyes, recognizable and new all at once. It is hard to keep control of her face and she breathes out her _Ohh_ of surprise on the inside only. Touching is almost painful in this strange state of heightened sense and she knows well enough why he angles himself away from her as much as he can. She is used to men wanting her, never seeing it until now as anything other than a weakness to be exploited, a tool for her to use. But he wants her, almost immediately and it is as awkwardly painful for him to touch her as it is for to accept it because this has to be staged and at a time where she feels as though she has forgotten her usual lines. The rush of arousal that hits her in response to his makes her dizzy, the floor turning circles at a sliding angle.

She has to almost cling to the mantelpiece to keep herself steady. She had so completely convinced herself that she would not feel like this, that she was not as damaged as she had become convinced she had to be to feel the way she did. Anatole had never believed they were doing anything wrong and it seemed like cruelty to an animal to tell him otherwise, but she had always known that other brothers and sisters were not like this, and feared some terrible brokenness within the two of them to be the cause of it, even if they were beautiful and better than everyone else all the same. But she had managed to more than half convince herself it was something she had grown out of and worked hard on this belief. And now all that work was shattered in an instant. It feels as though she is aware of her heartbeat for the first time in years and the steady rhythm from so deep down frightens her like drum beats in the dark.

She has become too used to the way their father works to have ever doubted how he would play this. It is all depressingly familiar, though now she feels that rush of excitement telling her their life could be different, exhilarating and dreadful. Her head spins, giddy with it, and as she watches him she cannot believe her overarching feeling to be _good god I did not know this could happen to me!_ She sees the understanding dawn in his eyes when he realises what she has always known – that papa will keep them from having any time to be alone as much as he possibly can. But, having had longer to assimilate this knowledge than he has had, she knows too that he cannot be successful forever. She had thought she would not care. It would not matter. How quickly - she feels a laugh rise in her and swallows it down with something approaching hysteria – it can all come around. What matters and what does not. Yes, she thought she was above this, cloaked herself in the smugness of _it will not happen to me._ And if it did happen she has – strange to realise it now – never imagined it could be him.

It is an absolute assault to the system, all this change, all at once. She has always been walking a tightrope, high above her world, always in fear of falling. Now that she finds herself in the air it is not as bad as she had feared. She supposes she should have known – _we fall together, always together -_ and though she knows it can only end with them both crashing she supposes that if they remain joined in the fall they can keep it going for long enough. When he meets her raised eyebrow with that smile she smiles back and has to look away from him quickly, pretends to be smiling at papa. When he smiles at her like that she thinks _no of course, it’s not falling, this is flying!_

She feels, for the first time since she can remember- possibly in fact for the first time in her life – like a ridiculous young girl. _And did it take me almost twenty years to reach this point?_ She wonders, surprised at herself, at the same time appalled that she has, after all, allowed it to happen. Well she did not allow it. It was barely a question of that. At the same time she is too practical to deny to herself what is happening like so many would to begin with. She wonders where this sudden ability to be honest to herself comes from but does not need to wonder for long. _From you of course –_ she looks his way quickly when he is not looking, something she suspects he has been doing himself up until now – _you were the only honesty I ever had._ It is more than just having her brother return; she realises she has come home to herself. _This is how I will remember it –_ she thinks with a curious pre-determination of hindsight – _I will remember being able to speak clearly to myself again on the day my reflection came back to me._

Suddenly it is as though everything that was lost can be found again, though she knows this is a madness borne of these new and incredible feelings. She has to put a polite hand to her mouth, feel the firm press of her fingertips against her lips not to laugh out loud, watching papa, watching the nervousness and shaky self-satisfaction flicker and war in his eyes. She knows what he tried to do over two years ago, what he was trying to prevent. If he only knew how much worse he has made it! Her heart sings and she feels as though the laugh is trying to escape from her ears – it had only ever been love before and – dangerous as that already was it is not, she realises now for the first time, the same as being _in_ love.

And she is in love now. It is a wave frozen at the point of breaking, prepared to crash a universe to fragments when it falls.

__x__

So a line from “A Song of Ice and Fire” almost snuck it’s way into this, so did a bit of “Les Liaisons Dangereuse” – I wiggled them out but they’re still half there in spirit, my apologies for being more than usually derivative. :-)


	13. Anatole, January 1802

**Anatole, January 1802**

“Is it strange?” she begins without preamble; suddenly there, sidling up beside him, glass in hand- he tries to ignore the way his hands start to shiver, balling them into fists so that they do not actually shake. It is not right, not at all, that she should have this effect upon him and worse, he suspects that for all his clumsy attempts at concealment she knows what that effect is all too well.

“Is what strange?”

“This –” she makes a sweep with her arm, the ballroom reflecting through the facets of her glass, a microcosm caught in a bubble of champagne  – “Everything. The world. Is it strange?”

“Is it the world?” He frowns to hear himself; something almost cynical in his voice that he does not recognise as belonging to him. It does not belong to him; indeed it sounds more like Dolokhov. He feels guilty thinking about Dolokhov and is not entirely sure why. Partly perhaps because he has not contacted him in almost two weeks, like he said he would, and also because he has not yet so much as mentioned him to Helene. He cannot even begin to imagine how he would, what he would even refer to the man as – _friend_ or _lover –_ it is not even that simple. He has never found language to be so inadequate before. He has never been so unsure of anything – even to whom he may have done wrong.

“Well –” she says airily – “I suppose you’ve seen so much more of it than I have”. He risks a look at her, sideways, trying to tell if she is being sore, sarcastic or flattering. She leaves her voice frustratingly ambiguous and she is smiling that habitual smile she puts on in public that tells him nothing but seems to give so many so much unwarranted hope. It does not give him hope in the slightest.

“Being back?” he returns to her original question- “Yes, it’s strange. Everything’s different, I –” he breaks off suddenly, not sure how much he can say to her – this new, more distant sister who he has barely seen these two weeks other than at the public functions they are constantly compelled to attend. It chokes him to be like this; suffocated by the weight of public appearance and everything that stands between them – understanding, society, this constant visibility and this something else – something so thick he wishes he could just cut through it but feels himself lacking a weapon sharp enough.

“Not _everything,_ surely.” For a frightening moment he almost catches her eye as she looks at him askance the same way he has been eyeing her. And then, as though he were not already screaming at himself to stay calm she adds just as lightly, in that same tinkling society voice and as though it does not matter –

“Did you miss me?”

There is something else in her voice, so faint he half thinks he has imagined it – but it is there and for just a moment it makes his heart stop, the rest of the room slows down, becomes a blur – for the first time catches the vaguest hint of concern, a whispered undercurrent to her calm façade that speaks of something churning darkly underneath.

“How can I –” he starts, looks at her quickly, ignoring her smile, glancing straight at the flash in her eyes – like looking directly at the sun. He realises there is only one way to do this, and it is her way – carelessly, as though they are just catching up, harmlessly, trivially and unconcernedly. He switches to a different voice, a different game of  himself –

“Would you _like_ me to have missed you?”  He congratulates himself on the slyness of the question, but not for long.

“It’s all the same to me,” she shrugs, as he realised he knew she would.

“No then,” he shrugs back, giving her that quick look and adding pointedly– “not if it’s all the same to you.”

She smiles and he feels himself congratulated on how well he is taking to the game.

“You’re learning,” she raises an eyebrow – “Papa has another engagement tonight after this one,” she adds and for a moment he frowns, thinking she is changing the subject. “He’s taking Hyppolite as well –” and then the final breakthrough – “You used to tell me everything.” Her smile slips, curling briefly into something unbearably enigmatic; she rests a butterfly hand on his arm and drifts away to mingle in the crowd.

He wonders, pacing his room that evening, if he has just been being stupid all this time – if she has been trying to communicate with him in this curious code ever since he got back and he has only cracked it now because she dared to be just a little more obvious. He wonders if she _knows_ he has paced his room every night since he returned, wondering if he could just go to her like he used to. Now he wonders if she has lain awake every night cursing him and his doubt. Well he has cursed her enough, tried to avoid her, tried everything to make this go away. It has not gone away; neither the love nor the lust and they are both frightening and somehow new. The newness is worst of all – loving before has been as natural as breathing, both times, but this is not like that, this is like waking up to a painful day. Even his body is at a loss how to handle these relentless needs. He tries to cast her out, to conjure up a fantasy of any other girl he can bring to mind, but the fantasies all turn into the things he wants to do to her and it is the savagely visceral thought of her that makes him come every time, with her face before him and her name trapped behind his lips.

It was so easy before; loving her, wanting her – before they were separated and he came to a half understanding that it was not, for reasons he still could not begin to fathom, a thing that was supposed to be. Now that need is back and the love has metamorphosed into something uncontrollable it frightens and confuses him. He wishes he could ask Dolokhov about it – the only person he could trust to speak to, he might be able to tell him what to do. But this, he supposes, is the one case in which his friend would not tell him and it might – he supposes briefly – even be unfair to ask.

_You used to tell me everything_ she said. He knows it; even when he did not voice a thought or a feeling the moment its existence occurred to him, he would creep to her room every night to relieve himself of every word in his head, ever need in his heart. Is that what she meant? That he stop this ridiculousness and go to her now? He hopes he has not misunderstood. Thinking is difficult and action is easier and he is not a coward even if he is afraid. He goes. He raises a hand to knock on her door, drops it and walks in; he never knocked before, and there have been too many changes to risk setting any more new precedents.

“Well _finally.”_

She turns from her mirror, rolling her eyes, a smile tugging at her lips that for once is not a mask. She is holding her earrings in one hand, black and cut and sparkling and her hand rests lightly on her hairbrush on the dresser.

“I thought I’d have to keep asking until next Christmas.”

“But –” he frowns, “You never asked?”

“Oh –” she makes a half caught sound of surprise, wonder betraying itself in her eyes. “It still does that!”

“Eh? What still does what?”

“Your forehead –“ she smiles, rising, coming to him – “It crumples up in the middle when you frown, you remember? I used to iron it out for you.”

Her smile – he cannot take his eyes from it – it is so guileless suddenly, naked, her parted lips transforming her into almost a child and she touches two fingers to his frown lines in a playful, gentle press. He closes his eyes, breathing her in, she is so close now he has to hold onto her or fall. The hold turns into a clutch and he is clinging to her like he has wanted to since he got back – longer, he supposes, he has wanted this since he first went away. She reaches back, river to sea, winding her arms around his shoulders, her hands on the back of his neck, flowing as they always should be. He feels a dam break inside of him. When he looks at her again her eyes are wet.

“I thought you hated me,” he says and the words run fast – “I thought you didn’t love me anymore, didn’t care – you stopped writing and you were so angry.”

“You stopped trying to come home. Yes I was angry. It doesn’t matter now. Every time you wrote it made me so happy and then for days after it made me so sad – when I read your letters you felt closer – then I’d get to the end and you weren’t. ”

“Every time I came home you weren’t there. I started to think father was telling the truth – that you wanted to be elsewhere, that you were too busy, that you knew I was here but were otherwise engaged.”

Her eyes glaze and shine, he can see that she is biting back tears and her words come out thickly  –

“It _wasn’t_ the truth. How could you, Anatole?”

“Well, it was stupid.”

“You mean _you_ were stupid.”

“Yes if you must. A friend of mine told me I was being - that it was what it was. He said you had to care, really.”

Her eyes narrow a little and she looks at him curiously.

“You _told_ someone about me? You didn’t tell him everything.” She sees the look on his squirming face and groans – “ _Anatole!”_ She rolls her eyes to the ceiling.

“It’s not like that. He’s different – it’s – let me tell you.”

He takes her hands and leads her to the bed, propping himself up against the headboard while she sits cross legged looking at him, subconsciously falling back into the old pattern for telling secrets. He tells her everything from the start – about Paris and school and getting thrown out, of all the bad behaviour he concocted and yes – enjoyed to get there. He talks about the army and that life and missing her – that thread always running through it all. And most of all he tells her about Dolokhov. At first about their meeting and their friendship, about the conversations and the late night drinking sessions, about the fights and the games, always skirting something until Helene sighs and stops him shaking her head  –

“Anatole were you _fucking_ this friend of yours?”

“Whatever gave you –” he only begins because he is sure he has not said anything to imply it. “Yes. Yes I suppose I was – or more he was fucking me – are you –” he looks at her carefully, noticing a certain barrier in her eyes that was not there before. It is not a complete closing off, like he has seen her do in public just a slightly guarded, thoughtful look “Are you angry?”  
“Do you love me?” she asks, frowning and biting her lip  
“Yes of course. Always.”  
“Do you love him?”  
The question takes him by surprise; it occurs to him that he has not considered it. It occurs to him that he is failing completely to keep his thought process from blazing out of his eyes. He looks down, afraid of the answer he would have to give her if he is to be honest. She sighs and he realises his pause was answer enough. He is surprised that she can have realised it almost before he did.  
“Well” she looks down for a moment, looking up again, smiling a smile that distresses him a little because it is such a return to artificial form - “Do you love me less for loving him?” For the first time in possibly years it occurs to him to feel guilty – ready to feel terrible for putting the worry in her eyes.  
“No,” he answers honestly. “No, not at all. It’s different.”  
“And is he here? In Petersburg?”  
“Yes, we came back together.”  
“And you haven’t tried to see him all this time? You must. He loves you I suppose?” she carries straight on as though she does not even need that question answered. “Well you must. And you must introduce us – though I must say he sounds like a scoundrel.”  
“Well aren’t I a scoundrel?”  
“Yes. That’s why you have to introduce us. I’ll reserve judgement until then.”

He has forgotten how much she can make him laugh. Strange to have forgotten so much yet spent so much time remembering. The way her nose scrunches up when she laughs and her forehead when she frowns - just the same as his. The way her hands move, almost constantly as she talks, illustrating her words with her gestures, those hands fluttering like living creatures. How surprising she is, how accepting of these things that others would give up on him for, how generous her love is in its way. He knows she would not believe him if he told her she had a single kind or honest quality and so he keeps these thoughts to himself like a secret treasure.

She flops now, to lean against the headboard beside him, the girl he remembers, not half so poised and graceful as the one the world sees; this girl idle and languid, uncontained and dramatic in every gesture. He loves them both – this girl and the society queen. But it is the girl who presses her nose into his cheek, kisses him with playful lips and shining eyes. He turns his head, kissing her back with a first kiss just as playful. But the feel of her skin, the smell of faint perfume and _sister_ – it turns into something hungry, something desperate, pushing against her, trying to consume her with fierce feral kisses. It is wonderful, swirling and ecstatic and she is caught up in it too until she seems to shudder and she breaks away, palms against his chest, only just pushing –

“Wait – stop, no – we can’t –” he ignores her for a moment and she reiterates her broken words, squirming to get away as though it hurts her to do so but she has to –

“We _can’t,_ ” she says again. He stops, irritated and in need.

“Why not? We’ve done this before.”

“Yes. And they sent you away. Anyway, it’s different now.” She looks down, her voice becoming bitter.

“Why is it different?” he feels as though he is arguing with himself more than her – because he _does_ know there is something different. He does not know why he has to hurt them both by making her say it any more than she does.

“We’re older. We – we should know better –” she says it as though she hates herself for it and then looks up at him with something helpless, half tragic in her eyes that does anything but make him love her less – “And I wasn’t _in_ love with you before.”

Moments ago he would have thought that there was nothing she could have said that would hold him back now, that with the dam broken he could not hold back from her for anything. But this – this confession that he understands only too well gives him too much pause for thought. This knowledge that they never had before – that this cannot end the way they would have it – it is suddenly too much to bear and he jumps up abruptly.

“I have to go.”

“No,” she glares at him with such icy fire in his eyes he realises she has misunderstood him;

“I don’t mean forever – not like before - I just –” he feels suddenly as though the room is a cage and he is cornered, backing away until he hits the door, reaching to open it, looking at her once before he flees, offering up the only explanation he can for  running out like this –

“I wasn’t in love before either.”

Outside her door he takes one deep breath in and out and when the world stops spinning just enough to really live in it he realises he can hear her crying through the door. He walks quickly back to his room and the house rings to another door slamming shut.

__x__


	14. Hélène, January 1802

**Hélène** **, January 1802**

The days that follow are an agony of tension. She curses herself for her spinning head and beating heart, _like a stupid schoolgirl,_ she berates herself. The only consolation is that their father has slowed down his persistent, almost aggressive round of social functions. She wonders if they have passed some kind of test; with the work she has put into it she almost hopes so.

The morning after he comes to her they meet awkwardly over the breakfast table and she thinks, with a sinking heart, _here we go, more walls_ and sighs almost audibly. It is Hyppolite who fixes it, quite by accident, when he makes some allusion to their awkwardness, unacceptably mocking the frostiness between them and they both sigh and groan a faint but automatic –

“Oh shut up,” that evokes and resurrects so much all at once that they cannot help but meet eyes across the table and smile warm conspiratorial smiles. And so the past becomes their new refuge; a way of invoking intimacy whilst being able to pretend it is what it has always been. Hyppolite leaves the table not long after and Anatole grins;

“Do you think he’ll ever get the hint and actually shut up?”

“It’s hardly a hint when you word it _shut up._ And no, surely he’d have got there already.”

“How many years _have_ we been trying?”

“Since I could speak I think – and I have a two year start on you.”

“I was an adorable child I’m sure.”

Now she grins;

“I don’t know who told you that. It wasn’t me. You were a nightmare. I wasn’t interested in the slightest. All you did was cry until you got your own way and then gurgle about it happily until you wanted something else. You haven’t changed.”

“Shut up. You loved me.”

“Well I couldn’t get rid of you. All you’ve done is toddle after me ever since you started to walk. You know they praise that in most children - in you we all just groaned.”

“And when I started to speak sentences?”

“Oh darling boy; we’re still waiting.”

It is an awkward return to form; the only clue to its awkwardness being how deeply they rely on reminiscence. She knows it is a shaky path they are walking, and only a matter of time before they fall; and she suspects that he knows it too. She feels the giddiness even more in public when she knows that he is watching her, the knowledge prickling the back of her neck as she dances with other men, flirts and simpers and weaves a constant web of balance around herself. She wishes constantly that he had one fraction of her restraint – and even her restraint feels like a flimsy and badly erected screen. One day at one of their balls she drifts over to him after a dance to stand by the wall as though the flow of the dance floor has dropped her there quite casually. She dares a glance at him and realises it was a mistake.

“What’s the matter?” she asks it airily and unconcerned. He scowls.

“Must you really dance with every idiot who asks?”

“Yes. You should do it too. There’s always a girl in want of a partner.”

“I don’t want to,” he tosses his head, sniffing – “I want to dance with you.”

“ _Quelle stupide –”_ she mutters and looks away quickly, remembering suddenly another time when she said that on another night he had asked her to dance. She bites her lip to drive the memory away.

“You can’t,” she says, harsher than she really means to.

“I _know_ that,” he snaps. He reaches for her hand but she moves away quickly and the grasp becomes a pinch at her wrist making her scowl, snatch her arm back and walk away quickly. _Don’t think_ she rebukes herself sternly – _don’t think about how much you want it too. Don’t think about the way you made that face behind you sad, don’t think about his eyes that reflect every damned feeling of the moment, don’t think how beautiful we would look dancing together, don’t remember the first time we kissed, don’t –_

That she has to tell herself so sternly is bad enough – testament to how badly she is failing. Worse she knows that she is not entirely listening to her own good advice; she is thinking about it _all_ and too much. It seems now as though this was all so easy when he was not here. You can shut off the sound of the sea singing when you cannot see it but not when it is there, close and cold in your face.

Two days later – restless days in which they do not quite find their way out of this forced distance that becomes frosty when left untouched – he comes into her room without even knocking. She has been on the point of getting into bed but she looks at his face – guilty, distressed and angry, and sighs, forgetting how much she has been wanting him to come to her.

“What have you done now?”

“What have _I_ done? Nothing. Who said I’d done anything?” Anatole’s voice is high, almost shrill; if she were not so tense with him she could have laughed at it.

“It was Captain Lukov wasn’t it? Whatever did you say to him? He walked past me with his nose in the air just after speaking to you. What did you do?”

Anatole sighs dramatically, as if to attempt to make her feel bad for suspecting that he has to have done something.

“I told him to go to hell,” he grunts shortly.

“And may one ask why?” Anatole struggles to keep her eye and failing looks down at the carpet, scuffing it with his foot – “Stop that.”

“He asked if I could recommend him to my sister”.

She stares at him for a moment and shakes her head - it is so apparent how aware he is that this was not the right response to give to such a request. She rolls her eyes so hard her head moves with it.

“And it occurs to you of course that this is an inappropriate response?”

He opens his mouth as though to answer her properly but closes it again scowling and flings himself into a chair beside her bed, slumping and pouting.

“I don’t care! I don’t care about _appropriate._ I’m done with it I tell you – I’m done with all these idiots wanting something out of you. Why _should_ I help? Why do you let them, eh?”

He growls it at her accusingly and she feels that growl reverberate low down inside her in a startlingly pleasant manner at the same time as it ignites the only kind of anger she can never put out. He is the only person she ever gets to fight with and she does not even stop herself from rising to the bait.

“I do what I have to do. It’s about time you started to do the same.”

“What you _have_ to,” he sneers – “Does that mean you have to let strangers touch you? Make love to you? Get more out of you than I could and I –”

“Yes!” she spits it back before he can say the thing that will stop her – “Yes I have to and more when it comes to it. You saunter back after all these years and think you can just do what you want. Well I’ve had to play this game every damn day since I was ten years old and you think I’d stop just because you don’t like it? You think it’s so easy but you don’t know anything, do you hear? You think I like it? Sometimes I look in the mirror and can’t tell who I’m looking at, I pinch myself every day to remember how to feel and sometimes I could just –” she reins it back before she catches herself out in something too appalling – she is not even sure what it is she could do, kill someone or herself she would not like to say. Her fists are clenched, pushing into the mattress beneath her and she nods, feeling her nostrils flare in a shuddery expulsion of breath – “Yes,” she nods again – “Yes I do what I have to. I always have. And when they tell me I have to marry someone I’ll do that too –”

“No!” she is almost glad he leaps in because she realises she is trembling, brimming with frustration and disgust at it all – “No, not that. I won’t let you – I’ll fight anyone who tries –”

“For what? My honour? You men – what would you do? Marry me?” She forces a bitter tinkling parody of a laugh – “You _can’t._ You never could. It was a game little brother – just a game we played to try and forget. Even if I wanted to –”

For a moment she thinks she is the one who has started to cry and she breaks, off gasping for air. But it is not her who is crying; Anatole is, his face crumpling in on itself like a ruined letter, utterly failing to sniff back angry, ugly tears. With the flood inside threatening to drown her she has managed not to cry but this is the one thing she is defenceless against and she starts to cry too.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry – I didn’t mean it, come here –”

She holds her arms out helplessly and he comes to her so fast and so readily, stumbling head first into her arms, that she has to close her eyes against the wave of guilt that hits her for making him sad. He buries his face in her shoulder, holding her gracelessly around the waist and, she thinks, all but trying to crawl into her lap. She sighs and kisses the top of his head, stroking the back of his neck where it’s soft and velvety, like tickling a dog behind the ears, rocking slightly, murmuring –

“Don’t. Don’t cry. It’s alright, I’m sorry, darling don’t cry –”

She can feel him relax quickly beneath her stroking fingers, fingers that so well remember where to stroke, where makes him smile and where to soothe. He looks up at her with tearful eyes that make her feel like the meanest, wickedest creature in the world for so much as trying to tell him this truth –

“You –” his lip quivers, eyes wide – “You – don’t want to marry me?”

Trust Anatole to find the only thing she had said that was a lie. She does not want to answer, does not want to hurt herself by admitting the lie, by saying _of course I do, I always have, I wish, I wish, I wish._ But she wants to hurt him by perpetuating the lie even less and in this and, she hopes, only this – she will always be unselfish.

“I’m sorry,” she says “That was mean of me, of course I do – I always – but it doesn’t matter –” she stops, frowns at the way he looks at her, the way as if to say that if she carries on and says what she means to _it doesn’t matter what I want_ – he will only get upset again – “It doesn’t matter,” she says again, shaking her head and forcing herself to smile. For the first time in so long it feels difficult to do and somehow it doesn’t work on him anyway. He starts to frown and his fingers reach for her face almost as though he would push her lips into a smile he likes better. He used to do that, she remembers, never liking to see her sad.

Everyone has always wanted her to smile, she thinks, and she resents it in everyone but him. She knows there is nothing more behind his wish than a genuine desire that she be happy.

_“And you’re always so happy,” she said once._

_“Yes” he shrugged “Why shouldn’t I be? Life is so fun, so full of things to do, so many nice things Lelya, please be happy too.”_

_“Will you still have any left if you give me some of yours?”_

She remembers how eagerly he nodded, how willingly he acted out taking happiness from his heart and dumping it into her lap. He is a wellspring of happiness, invigorating and refreshing. She wonders that she did not die of thirst without it. She feels her heart filling up from that well again now and kisses the fingers against her cheek. He smiles, his fingers sliding into her hair, and he lies down across the bed pulling her down with him and it all comes back to her – all the feeling, the memory she was trying to quell. All those years of touching and being touched, the gentle exploration that became too fierce too fast perhaps but never stopped being wonderful, an adventure she never wanted to stop having. So much nostalgia in the way he touches her and so much that is new; they knew each other so completely before, had come into awareness of one another’s bodies as though this skin were a part of their imaginary world to be explored again and again, delighting in the familiarity. It is all still there.

It is still there but layered now with so much else; something deeper than a need to remember, an urgency in these new and burning kisses that leave her gasping and breathless, afraid of how much she wants this and of how young this desperation makes her feel. She does not have to ask if he feels it too; he was always terrible at holding back and his hands, now allowed, are everywhere upon her, her skin singing and seeming to vibrate in the wake of each caress. All the tightness in her chest escapes her lips in a groan of his name; it feels like the only prayer she has ever spoken, so sweet she says it again –

“Anatole – please,”

She feels him smile, pressing his face to hers, rubbing against her cheek to cheek, such shocking tenderness she feels the tears slip out from under her eyelids.

“Please what?” His breath so close to her ear makes her shiver, as though her whole body is laughing and crying all at once.

“Everything –” it is almost a sob – “Please everything. I want everything.” He smiles again –

“You sound like me”.

“I _am_ you.”

“Then I’m beautiful.” His smile fades beneath an intensity of feeling she can read completely; he is looking at her as though he never saw her before – “So lovely, Hélène, so beautiful, my sister”. It is new, these names; she realises how rarely they said them before, simply _brother_ and _sister_ were always enough and more, after all, than most lovers can share, but they need this now, she realises – they need to share names as lovers always do to make this new love real.

“Anatole,” she says again, and hopes it is enough to express it all – it is so musical, so beautiful, this word. It tingles on her tongue.

“I need –” she says – “I can’t –” they throw out fractured sentences searching for the other to complete them, not quite knowing what she needs, or what she cannot. But he does. She knew he would.

“You can -” he says and then not _I love you_ but “- I know you,” and it makes her smile because it is true.

“Yes!” she gives back dark kaleidoscope eyes – “Yes, I know you too,” and she knows they both know what they mean and that nobody else has to.

“I want –” he says and she remembers this too – “I need – Hélène I have to –”

“Yes,” she nods fiercely – “ _Yes”._

She rolls onto her back and when he kisses her this time it is hungry and savage, spilling down over her chin and trailing across her throat, pressing his head into her as though he could disappear into her skin, kissing her collar and kneeling over her to scoop her completely into his arms. She feels smaller than she did, his arms so much stronger than she remembers, pulling her to sit up briefly, dragging her nightgown over her head. She hears him groan out a curse as she drops back, looking at her, eyes dark and predatory.

“ _Fuck_ yourself,” she teases, echoing his curse. He smirks, a more sensual, far more dangerous version of the old smirk –

“No,” he grins – “no, I really don’t think so.”

And then she could not let a tease escape her for anything in the world when he dips his head to cover her breasts with kisses, licking and sucking at her nipples, digging his fingers into her skin hard, now growling a word she used to hear from him so often into every inch of skin he presses a kiss to –

“ _Mine.”_  

She has been afraid of this, this little word; the one he has always liked so much. Afraid that if he tried to say it to her it would hurt her because it was not true, because it could never be true, not really, not like this. But it is true. She knows suddenly it is the only thing that is. That whoever else she has to belong to, this will be the only truth her heart will accept;

“Yes,” she says, her hands steady now, working the front of his shirt – “Yes yours, I promise –” she wishes she could explain that this promise will always come first to her beside any other wedding vow she might ever have to make but this is hardly the time if there will ever be a time. She swirls whichever way he touches her, heady with lust, the same lust she can see in his eyes and he, reduced to the first words he ever learnt and nothing else – _mine_ and _I want_ and they are his prayer like his name is hers, the only prayer he will ever mean and right now it is for her and she thinks _yes, yes this is what I am, I was born to be an idol, I was born for worship._ It has to be a kind of madness that such grandeur fills her so easily but if it is she delights in it and the savage press of him against her, his need to be inside her so perfect and so pure she could almost laugh for joy.

He is still kissing her, brushing paths down her body with his lips, tracing rivers across her skin and he is still half dressed but needs her now too much for perfection and she locks her legs around him guiding him in shuddering to a stillness in the intense bliss of having him fill her, a moment of calm before the frenzy takes over, and he is slamming into her in ecstatic urgency, cramming them back together like a broken favourite toy, his fingers remembering, stroking to make the reformed thing perfect. She used to fix things for him all the time and knows, now more than ever, heady with the bliss of it, _yes, yes, some things really can be fixed._ She wonders for one second what they were before this life and knows that whatever it was they can only have been one thing then, splendid and gloriously complete and _oh_ she thinks, feeling him so deep inside her, pressed so completely close, his head fitting in against her neck – _oh yes we’ve done this before._ Like a memory of another life and then it goes and all there is is sensation and flying and shuddering like feathered wings all around her.

She knows that knowledge changes from moment to moment but in that moment she knows with perfect clarity that they are the only two people in the world. She clutches for his hand in the sheets and finding it thinks of their world, the one they made, and turning to him smiling she knows he will know what she means when she runs there with him now.

“Come with me,” she says and he does.

__x__

**I kinda hate writing sex scenes? I worry that every one I write is the same and every time I try not to go reference Plato’s origin of love in some way and invariably I do it anyway and I’m rolling my eyes at myself like oh-there-i-go-I did-that-two-halves-or-a-whole-trope- again. Ah well. Also I may have been listening to “No-one Else”  from _Great Comet_ whilst writing the second to last verse, don’t know if anyone noticed that sneak in there. **

**On a side note I re-wrote a few lines of the previous chapter, not enough to have to go back and re-read the whole thing but now instead of just accepting Dolokhov and Anatole’s relationship straight off Helene is more guarded about it and determines to withhold judgement until after meeting him. It’s a fairly minor change but relevant to the next chapter. :-)**

 

 

 

 

 


	15. Dolokhov, April 1802

**Dolokhov, April 1802**

 

“You’ll help us though, won’t you, eh Dolokhov?”

Anatole is pacing back and forth in front of him, his inability to keep still becoming almost irksome. Dolokhov watches him thoughtfully, wondering why, why this idiot boy out of all the people in the world? He asks the question in a mixture of certainty that Dolokhov will help and apprehension – probably as to what he would do if he did not.

“Yes,” he does everything but roll his eyes. “Yes, I’ll help.”

He wonders when it became impossible to refuse Anatole anything. At what stage did he become so hopelessly and irrevocably hooked. There is a part of his mind that is still screaming faintly at him to get out while he still can, but it has been singing the same tune for two years now and the time is long past when he could have stopped to listen.

And Hélène. He sighs – he tries not to think of Hélène, tries to steer away from admitting that he has fallen in love with her as well. It had not been what he expected in the least. So many years of Anatole telling him he _had_ to introduce them and he not really wanting it, not wanting to know her, trying to hate her purely as the person who kept Anatole away – always a little away from him even when they were lying side by side. He thinks of all those nights, sometimes literally in the process of cooling off, of regaining breath, when he would start to talk about her and the illusion that he could mean anything to Anatole seemed to fall right away, trampled beneath the very idea of her feet. He had not stopped to really imagine what she might be like.

It was more of a shock than it should have been. He found himself waiting throughout almost all of January, busying himself with other matters until he had thoroughly convinced himself that Anatole really did not plan to contact him after all. Then the call had come in early February on a bitter cold day, opening the door just a crack to accept the letter without letting in too much of the cold. He read it quickly and folded it crisply as though it were a matter of business. Even so his sister, watching with quick bird-like eyes, had cocked her head on one side and commented as soon as their mother was out of the room;

“It’s from him, isn’t it?”

He looked at her, half annoyed and half impressed, not bothering to lie –

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“I’ve been invited to go over there tomorrow night. He wants me to meet his sister.”

Galina’s eyes had narrowed and he could not help but wonder how much of the little he had not told her she had managed to work out all the same.

“Do you want to?”

“I –” he groaned, closing his eyes and sitting down heavily – “I don’t know. It’s – it’s complicated.”

“But you’re going.”

“Oh, am I?”

“Yes of course. Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Well if it’s an _order –_ ”

“It is. You’ve been going around like a moon-sick calf –”

“I _have_ not.”

“Moon-sick calf,” she repeated, so wryly comic that he could not help but laugh.

“ _Fine.”_

“You could ask them to come here you know – if you wanted,” she said this far more shyly and it made him wince both to understand that this – to overcome her nervousness enough to offer to meet people she did not know for him -  was the best thing she had to offer him, and out of imagining Anatole and his sister in their house. That last filled him with that bitter nostalgic mix of shame and savage pride.

“I’ll _go –”_ he winked at her – “Since my superiors command.”

What had he expected? He thinks about it now – he had expected, in as much as he had imagined her at all – to be Anatole but a female version. He had not been entirely disappointed in this, but then – he sighs to think of her. The house had been quiet when he arrived. He had taken enough time over these weeks to no longer be daunted or even impressed by the size and audacity of the place. On arrival he had been ushered up to a suite on the first floor he later discovered were her own personal rooms, his footsteps echoing on the marble stairway and falling silent at her door. He wished his breathing would have the same good grace.

Thank god for Anatole, who had greeted him with open arms as though he had truly missed him, wide and welcoming with the usual easy smile and a manner like a restless and excitable pony. His first sight of Hélène was from over her brother’s shoulder, and he was never more glad of the distraction preventing him from gaping at her or even having to visibly adjust to her existence. Because she was _beautiful,_ of course. He had expected that, even if he had not expected the extent of it. He wondered if they had dressed to match on purpose, but it did not make their beauty any less daunting. He had been sure Anatole with his heightened, besotted senses would have exaggerated somewhat and he found himself almost flustered on being proved wrong.

“Dolokhov – my sister Hélène,” Anatole had presented her breathlessly, clearly bounding with excitement and pride in her, almost pushing her forward. She in turn was more reserved, almost chilly, Dolokhov thought – where Anatole was a running river she was sunlight on snow, not quite warm enough yet to melt.

“So,” she said archly, extending a pale hand – “You’re the man who’s been fucking my brother.” She raised an eyebrow as he kissed her hand, and a smile lurked in the corner of her mouth, and with that one utterance his every assumption changed. Far from being the perfect double of her brother that he had expected, this was someone far more like him. Someone in control of all those same emotions that ran unchecked in her brother, someone who was used to dissembling and pretence, who used them as weapons, sharpening her smile on the edge of her lies.

He realised too that she was testing him; that, more duplicitous even than just to lie she was throwing him a challenge of utter honesty in the hope of tripping him up. He looked up at her as he would at a man he was sizing up over a card table. For one long charged moment there was the awareness that they could very easily be enemies. He glanced at her secretive smile and felt more in danger of her than he had perhaps of anyone. He did not want to be her enemy.

“I cannot deny it,” he took a step back, shoulders conceding her a win before adding – “To think we should have so much in common.”

She blinked at him for a moment; a searching, bird-like look on her face that reminded him curiously of his sister, and then she smiled. Without the false smile ever dropping from her face her features relaxed into a bright, genuine grin.

“Yes,” she nodded – “Yes, alright”. It was a strange thing to say but he found that he knew exactly what she meant – it meant, he thought _yes alright you can stay_ – even if she had not entirely made her mind up yet - and it occurred to him that she had come to him with a similar set of anxieties to his own. Anatole had simply looked from one to the other of them, delighted that the two people dearest to him were together at last and understanding nothing of what had just occurred.

He had abandoned any expectations whatsoever. It was impossible, he decided logically, to gauge where this could go, and when; and nothing had been pushed but they had fallen together easily all the same. Not into bed, not immediately; although the awareness of that possibility had hung like a delicious scent between them all that evening. In the end they had played cards and she – he was not entirely surprised - had beaten him. Not to the tune of very much but he had a garnered an even greater respect for her when she actually took his money rather than shame him with a refusal. All the same he had found her winnings in his inner coat pocket later that night after he left them. He wondered which of them had slipped it back to him.

He found himself every few minutes on the brink of feeling like an intruder. They were _made_ to be together; it was obvious. He realised too that the way they were around him was a freedom they allowed themselves with nobody else and found himself feeling oddly honoured to be witness to it. At the same time it hurt him, seeing them guard their love so closely, even from each other. They would each look the other’s way with a certain degree of intensity only when they thought the other was not looking; it was like a dance, where they fitted one another’s steps perfectly without ever looking in the same direction. He found himself wanting to move the world to make the two of them a possibility, wanting this almost more than to be a part of it.

Almost. But he did want to be a part of it; wanted it more than almost anything. He had smarted before at the idea of having to share Anatole with anyone, but he realised now that he had come too late for that already. It was her who was sharing Anatole with him, if even she could claim such ownership. They came as a pair, it was utterly unarguable – but seeing her and speaking to her now he realised he had been wrong to want it any other way.

Somehow or other he found himself fitting into their lives. He did not force it and perhaps this was how it became possible, whilst at the same time never feeling actually easy. Every social interaction for Hélène was a complex game in which she had already marked out several moves ahead. He appreciated that, intrigued in finding a mind that worked in a manner so parallel to his own – though at the same time it made every moment of interaction precarious. After those first few meetings he found himself wondering that he had ever imagined her and Anatole to be alike beyond a physical resemblance and then, after the first time he woke up beside them both, he wondered why his initial judgement had ever changed.

He remembers that morning almost better than the night preceding it. He had woken up first, never fully at ease when sharing a bed and always on guard. It was like a dream to be here anyway, but even with this already well defined sense of unreality he had been touched and surprised on turning and seeing them beside him. In their sleep they had all but abandoned him, curling together in a way that was more animal than human, foreheads almost touching on the pillow, shoulder to shoulder and so close it was as though they felt the need to be so painfully, even in their sleep. He stared at them that morning unable to reconcile these sweet children with everything that had happened the night before. He moved Hélène’s hair out of her eyes with the most infinite tenderness, afraid to wake her but needing to see if her expression as what it had to be. Anatole, as he knew already, slept like a child, lips in a permanent pout like a little boy who has fallen asleep only on account of playing too hard all the day before, nothing but the most perfect innocence in every line of his face. Even after two years it tugged at something in his heart every time to see him. It seemed almost wrong for them to be together like this, he looked so like a twelve year old boy. He brushed Hélène’s cheek as though she were a baby bird and any movement might break her so intent he was on not waking her. He was right, though it shocked him to be so – her expression in her sleep was identical to her brother’s. He felt like an intruder, seeing her like this – he had expected it of Anatole but she worked so hard every waking minute to keep her masks in place that had almost convinced himself she would still have that same closed off expression in her sleep.

Suddenly, having seen her naked was nothing. He felt something prick at the back of his eyes and cursed himself for it silently. He should have known, he supposed, really known – how much of an act her bravado was, how little she had really put aside the ridiculous hopes and ideas that Anatole had never been able to repress or hide. Seeing her like this he knew painfully that while she may have accepted logically so much more than Anatole had managed, her heart was still a stranger to it and that acceptance did nothing but hurt her. Her blatant vulnerability hurt him even more than her brother’s, and in his heart he saw himself standing over the both of them as they slept, growling at the rest of the world to back off.

Anatole stirred in his sleep, burrowing closer to his sister with a whimpery noise Dolokhov had heard so many times before. He nuzzled in closer, as if that had even been possible, and followed the whimper up with a mumble of contentment. A few moments later Hélène stirred as though in belated response, but to his surprise she half turned her head, looking at him with bleary eyes and mumbled with a sleepy smile –

“Fedya – too far – s’cold.” She arched her back towards him and he sighed, settling back in against her and reaching to hold them both if he could have in the compass of his arm.

Somehow, he thinks, he has become a part of them, without ever daring to ask himself if he is a part they could live without or not, and even in these early weeks he has seen them starting to cling more needily to each other every time, seen them react to each new instance of realisation that they cannot have everything they want with a greater desperation to be close. He does not have to imagine hard to think what it must be like for them to have to spend so much time in company and together and be unable to touch. He knows it well enough – the feeling of needing just to reach to someone, to brush something off their face or touch their arm in reassuring intimacy and not being able to simply do it. He knows how it leaves the fingers screaming for that contact that seems as necessary as taking a drink. He, perhaps alone of anyone, has watched them and knows it cannot get better.

And so, though he feels something like a fatalistic jab of dread to have Anatole come to him with this, it is not entirely unexpected. He looks at his friend, at his wide open, beseeching eyes – so confident in his plan and so clueless as to how to carry it out, and he sighs.

“Yes,” he says as he knew he would – “Yes, I’ll help you run away.”

__x__

 

**I gotta credit _zedrobber_ for a lot of this chapter because they’ve written a few things absolutely identically to this in in their 2016 series fic _Now and Then._ I’m not stealing I promise, we just have a lot of shared head canons in relation to these three and I didn’t go into more detail on their early interactions because Zed’s done it already in that fic, e.g. I haven’t written their first night together because it would just be copying so I did the morning after instead. I should probably take this moment to thank the aforementioned _zedrobber_ for being a beautiful beta while I’m at it. THANK YOU NUGGET, HAPPY EGG DAY! :-)**


	16. Vasili, April 1802

 

 

**Vasili, April 1802**

The prince is not a stupid man but he finds himself these days beginning to think that this has become an irrelevance in light of all his other faults. He knows they have to be numerous though he is not, when he dares to really contemplate it, fully certain exactly what these faults are and finds himself putting it down to a vague over – fondness, indulgence and preference towards his beautiful children. He knows in an abstract way that it is wrong to have any such preference; that he has somehow failed on a parental level. He draws this conclusion from things he has heard.

He wonders sometimes why this affection, if that it was it is, does not extend to his eldest. He is not quite honest enough to admit that he sees too much of himself as a young man in Prince Hyppolit; too much dull unattractiveness and mediocrity. He supposes they should have bonded over this at some point but they never have.

He _is_ honest enough to realise that the other two frighten him. But that sounds like a terrible word to use in relation to his own children – _unnerve_ him then. He feels a distance, almost a  disbelief in them and has half wondered at times if they are even his, and then their continual and constantly startling synchronicity alienates him still further. He can feel – as it were – a force around them that it would hurt an outsider to run up against.

He wonders what it is he should have done. A weak paternal instinct frequently informs him how intently he favours his daughter, loves her even, perhaps beyond everything else. Her existence bewilders him; filling him both with a surging paternal pride and with disbelief that this curious precious creature can have anything to do with him. He does not know her. he does not think he could ever know her. It seems to him almost obscene to think that beneath that beautiful, almost luminous shell of her there is a heart that beats and a mind that thinks. Of course he has heard people suggest that she is really not in possession of either such attributes but he puts this down to a sullen sort of esteem, just further proof of her unarguable beauty from the heartbroken heads of too many overthrown suitors.

More and more Vasili finds himself at almost every social event, overwhelmed with praise and compliments of his daughter’s charm and beauty; praise, in truth, that he accepts delightedly but with an all but cringing awkwardness, uncertain really how any of this is at all his doing.

He knows why she refuses them all. It is the truth he likes to think about least of all. He has found himself wondering deeply ever since Anatole came home if he had not made a terrible mistake in sending the boy away to begin with. The easiest part to admit is that the army has not improved him. More to the point, and by far the worst, is that his ulterior motives for sending him away appear – if it could actually be possible – to have become still more of a concern since his son’s return.

At first the prince tried not to see. But it is impossible and once seen cannot be avoided. The way he looks at her! That alone, he thinks, should be a scandal to shake the whole of society. He sees him do it everywhere, those eyes destroying her, taking so much more than they should; he finds himself wanting to physically drag them into separate rooms; anything to avoid what surely the rest of his world has noticed too.

Of course it is almost the same as the way every man looks at her. But it is worse, unacceptably worse. Even if they were not who they were there has always been something frighteningly predatory in Anatole, something fierce and brutal and unchangeable, something dark enough to chill a father’s heart. He does not hold back when he wants something, does not even seem to see why he should. The prince can see too well how this at least has been his fault and he is determined that _this_ at least his son cannot have.

The worst of it is that he has seen her looking back, something shameful in her smile when they pass each other, something too alike in the list of their lowered heads when they talk together quietly in corners or in full view of the world to see. Their faces are always just slightly too close, their gestures too obviously flirtatious. He is at a loss what he could possibly do. He has, like any parent surely, instilled it in his children to love one another and now how can he possibly tell them not to?

It should not be like this. He fears himself going into the darkness of old age one of those sad hundreds that wail _where did I go wrong, how did I fail them_ and most pathetically of all – _But I did it for the best? Didn’t I do it for the best?_ He fears this beyond any concern for his children’s happiness.

It is on his mind when he returns home from the club that morning. It is the early edge of autumn and the chill in the air is new and ripe, biting at the ears and fingers. He finds himself disliking it; something portentous in the white of the sky today and the whistle of the wind. It is the kind of wind that speaks movement, change. He is not entirely certain he welcomes either of these things. The chill seems to follow him inside and it seems as though none of the servants will meet his eye. He finds himself knowing that something has happened but not wanting to abase himself by asking anybody what it is. The house seems quiet; more than it should be at this time of day. For all their sly creeping manners and the guilty turns of head when he walks into a room his children are usually bordering on noisy. If anything they are sometimes _too_ loud, too dramatic. They leap apart too quickly when he comes in, only proving that they were standing too close – at the very least – before he did so. The silence _should_ be welcoming, a relief; but it is not.

In the main drawing room where everyone is most like to be found at this hour he sees only Hyppolite, lounging idly on a couch, yawning and adjusting to being awake at midday and idly watching a servant stoke the fire.

“Where are they?” Vasily hears himself ask quietly. Hyppolite shrugs expansively, but he is bored and – Vasily realises – a little irritated by the question. It occurs to him that he has made yet another mistake, one of the small ones that all fit together to create the entire air of wrongness with which he treats his eldest son. He knows how left out Hyppolite has always felt, ignored by both himself and his siblings. He should have said something more genial, made more of a pleasantry before implying once again how little thought he gave the boy.

“Damned if I know” he mutters, face scrunching sullen, years of being run away from twisting the already blighted landscape of his face.

“Have they even come down yet?” he unconsciously raises his eyes towards the stairs leading up to the family bedrooms, ostentatiously poised on the brink of going to find out.

“I wouldn’t” Hyppolite yawns – “They’re probably –” The prince flashes him a face that dares him to finish that sentence – “Not awake” he waves a wrist lamely and looks away.

Vasily sighs and moves on towards his private study; his constant defence, move away, do not think, engage insidiously not directly. If in doubt – disengage. He closes the door behind him ready to feel the relief of solitude but the letter is sat on his desk like an intruder. He sees it before he even has time to take off his coat. For a moment he stares at it, feeling painfully the invasion of his inner sanctum by this simple rectangle of white. He knows, with gut curdling instinct that here lies the cloud that is poised to crack thunder through every hall and corner of the Kuragin household.

He picks up the letter as though it might bite him. It has been sealed lazily and the seal cracks when the letter lies in his hand. Here it is then, pointless to wish it away. He unfolds the small sheet with heavy fingers.

Seven words. If he were a more whimsical man he could have laughed at how little it took to bring down a family. Seven little words, scrawled in his daughter’s friendly, sweetly intimate hand.

_Gone travelling._

_Will write._

_Anatole and Hélène._

The words shine up at him like his daughter’s smile scrawled onto a page, dazzling and damning, too small even for a small piece of paper, too black against the white, too inconsequential. And just like that, they are gone then. Just like that they’ve vanished leaving nothing behind, not even the whispered word _elopement_ that creeps erroneously into his mind. He is not sure it can even apply. He is not even sure what would be worse; for them to come back somehow married or never come back at all.

He sits down at his desk heavily with the letter, such as it is, still in his hand. He stares at the words for longer than is sensible, as though by continued staring they could somehow be made different. He cannot force himself to imagine for a moment, despite the lightness of the words, that there is anything innocent in this sudden departure. He can see it all too clearly, almost hear their voices in this room in the smallest hours of the morning. They would never normally even _see_ such hours from this side of the day. He can see them, little as he wants to, slipping down the stairs, holding on to each other, bright eyed and whispering, trying not to giggle with the first sun only just cracking the horizon, the first shadows greying across the hall. He can see them crouched over his desk, laughter in their eyes, his son’s hand on the small of his daughter’s back, one of them whispering _what do we write?_ His daughter’s voice _no wait I’ve got it!_ Trying to keep from laughing too loudly at the brevity of her words and the jaunty air of carelessness with which she imbues them. He can see them every time he closes his eyes, hands across the their mouths to hold the laughter in, making more noise in hushing each other than they ever do in speaking. He can see their eyes laughing together, flashing with the same fire, too alike for comfort as she seals the letter with light fingered hands dropping it like a token on the desk.

 _And we’re done!_ She laughs and she buries her bright shining face in the crook of her brother’s shoulder and he presses his face into her hair as he has seen them do before, pretending not to sniff at each other’s skin, pretending not to shiver at the contact, pretending and pretending not to be in love.

Could it all come down on him so heavily? He wonders how such a thing could have happened, such a love. He feels leaden beneath a burden of self-pity, pushing the letter away from him across the table. He opens his eyes to stop seeing the thoughts that flit behind them and leans forward on the desk, face held in his hands, silent.

__x__


	17. Balaga, April 1802

**Ok so, I started writing the troika driver in this chapter as Balaga, having had a moment of brain death and forgetting that he had only known Anatole and Dolokhov six years in 1811 so it can’t possibly canonically BE Balaga at this point but I clearly completely cannot math. I may at some point change the POV to generic troika driver but honestly – it was way more fun to write it as Balaga. He is just for fun after all.**

 

**Balaga, April 1802**

 

The first rule, and the only one that ever really matters is not to ask questions. It has stood him in good stead for years, and he is not about to break it now. The only other rule, if he has one, is that he does not allow himself to get emotionally involved. It is not normally difficult. In this instance however he does find himself to be faintly compromised on the latter rule, if only because he has known the Dolokhov boy since he was a child. The troika driver could tell stories until the end of time about that boy with the unruly hair and the unforgettably fierce blaze of defiance in the eyes, a boy he remembers clattering down many a late night street in shoes that were too big for him, always swerving just to the right side of trouble. The number of times that rascal has jumped free rides on the back of his sleigh, always a surprisingly respected leader of some group of city urchins, always passionately committed to some endeavour or other just on or just off the right side of legal.

For certain he has always liked that boy; though it occurs to Balaga that it is probably past time he stopped thinking of him as a boy. _My fine gentleman_ he used to call him, more than half teasingly, in almost as little anticipation of it becoming truer than it could for any other urchin. Almost. He could not have said with all honesty that this apparent improvement in fortune was entirely surprising. Not with this one, although Dolokhov has assured him that in this case at least he is commissioning the job on behalf of a friend. Something in the way he says _friend_ tells Balaga something else as well. But it is more in his nature to keep such knowledge close and thereby inspire loyalty rather than to use it for bribery. It has been his experience that a certain kind of loyalty can pay at least as well if not better than corruption after all.

So he asks only such questions as are needed; elopements are his bread and butter after all. He asks where the young man lives, and then for the address of the young lady. He does not even raise an eyebrow on their being one and the same but comes privately to the assumption that he is dealing either with a gentleman running away with a maidservant or a lady and her manservant. He does not ruin it by asking; these across the border jobs are too much fun.

It is a surprisingly cold April morning, with a light drizzle and a weak sunshine both easing their way through the clouds at once. It is an hour he supposes a lot of people rarely see and for that novelty counts it one of his favourite times of day.

Dolokhov is unusually quiet, and they pass through the lightly glistening streets in silence until drawing into the right street and he tells him to wait with the troika by the east side servants entrance. He is not sure he has ever seen the man so quiet and apparently thoughtful. He jumps down from the sleigh with a light and easy tread, motioning Balaga to wait and whistling softly at the back door. A few moments later he hears a girl’s voice, clear as bright crystal, in an excited whisper that carries easily across the yard –

“- didn’t even know we _had_ a servant’s entrance!” followed by another voice like the backing to her song -

“Well how did you expect them to come and go, eh?”

“Shh!” she laughs though her whisper is louder than his murmur – “You’ll wake papa and –”

“- and all the rest, yes!” Dolokhov cuts in. “Can’t you both at least _try_ to be subtle?”

“Sorry Fedya,” the young man mumbles and –

“Fedya, darling” the girl echoes, not modulating her whisper one whit into something quieter but kissing Dolokhov brightly on the cheek in apology instead. The sense of giddy excitement that emanates from them is palpable and infectious; he knows this, it is one of his favourite things about elopements. He gets only a quick glimpse of their faces and it is enough to make him almost raise an eyebrow – it is obvious to look at them that his early assumptions were wrong, that this is not even as straightforward as he imagined it would be. But in truth he had not needed to see the identical glittering in their eyes to work it out, her casually dropped _papa_ has already given it all away. _Fascinating,_ he thinks, flicking the reins and driving out into the drizzle.

The rain clears up as the day goes on and as they drive he comes to know his passengers enough to get a picture of their lives, enough in this case to find himself almost caring. She sleeps for the first few hours, unused, he imagines, to waking at this hour, dropping her head onto her brother’s shoulder in spite of all his protestations. He overhears such snatches from the seats as to make him wonder about all three of them.

“How anyone can sleep at a time like this –” the first voice is Dolokhov’s and then the boy –

“She’s like a baby, the rocking puts her to sleep. Any time we travel anywhere, I swear.”

When they make their first stop at roughly noon she stirs like a cat, blinking around her as though surprised, adjusting herself to where they are, remembering, perhaps, what they are doing. When she does she stretches and smiles widely. The driver can see why anyone would fall in love with her when she smiles like that. More than her though, he sees the way that Dolokhov watches her, watches both of them, with a look of such careful tenderness – he has only ever seen the man reserve that kind of look for his family.

As the day goes on and they ride into Poland the back seat becomes a spring of excitable chatter tempered now and then with practical concerns, most of them, as far as he can tell, of a financial nature. He understands that the couple have drawn on their allowances for most of the year and that Dolokhov has made all the actual arrangements. He learns that they will not be stopping in Poland but going on to Budapest where they intend to stay indefinitely and with no long term plan. More than once he hears Dolokhov try to bring this up and Anatole – it has not taken him long to learn their names – brush it off airily each time as though it will somehow sort itself out. Balaga wants to shake his head at them in despair. They always think this, these runaways; so caught up in the moment that they never think about the consequences or continuity of these bright, glittering plans. He can tell that more than once Dolokhov is on the verge of trying to bring this up himself, but that he cannot bring himself to say anything that will quell the enthusiasm in those two high, bird-like songs.

Towards the evening they pull up at an inn that he discovers now is only the half way point of their journey. He has taken runaways here before, it being the kind of place where questions do not tend to be asked. Nevertheless, he smirks at the idea of this girl in a place like this.

“Oh dear,” he hears her remark, lighting down from the sleigh and straight into the slush of the street, grimacing in disgust as it splatters the hem of her skirt and looking around herself in curiosity and faint disgust. “I suppose I should have dressed more like a peasant.”

The men groan; Dolokhov shakes his head –

“Yes, as I recall mentioning to you days ago. I even supplied the attire. What was it again “Oh no, Dolokhov I couldn’t possibly! My skin will react terribly to such coarse fabric!””

“Oh, do shut up Dolokhov.”

“Here,” Dolokhov sighs, wearily, fur cloak already in hand. “Wear this at least. They’re not used to princesses around here.”

“ _You’re_ not used to princesses,” she grumbles, getting into the cloak all the same.

Balaga finds himself watching the two of them go in with a discomfiting amount of concern. He has been watching people for years; one of the necessities and perks of the job, and he has become pretty decent a judge of character. In the end, he has observed, there are only two categories of people that matter – those who survive and those who do not. For all their brightness and their gifts something niggles at the troika driver, telling him that these two do not fit into the first category. He sees everything, the mingled tenderness and excitement in their eyes, the way the man puts his hand on his sister’s back as he opens the tavern door. For a brief loud moment light spills out across the street, slipping out like a tongue, and then they are gone, swallowed up by it. He tries to imagine them on the inside; in a world inhabited by other people, the glow of firelight on her skin – he cannot imagine it. Not really.

When he looks away Dolokhov is looking up at him, watching him watching them with a resigned look on his face, a shared _I know._ But what can one do? The driver accepts his fare and wants to say something. This is the only other rule; you don’t say things. He almost manages to maintain it. Dolokhov turns away from him and just before he can follow the other two in, Balaga takes his arm.

“Eh,” he grunts, gruffly – “Take care of yourself alright?”

Dolokhov’s lips pull in something that is not quite a grimace;

“I always do.”

“And –” he sighs, it should not be this way – these games are supposed to be fun – “Take care of them.”

His not quite friend’s shoulders heave in a mirthless chuckle, more of a sigh;

“Hmm,” he nods affirmatively, echoing himself distantly – “Always do.”

It is not quite a true response, Balaga can hear it – it is too soon, he thinks for an _always_ of this nature. But it will be true, one day. He supposes Dolokhov only stopped himself from saying _I always will_ because it would have sounded too much like a promise.

He finds himself watching until they have all been swallowed up by the light of the tavern. As he watches, the rain starts to fall lightly again and somehow, in the last half hour the night has grown dark. He chews his lip for a moment, looking at the squares of light across the road, sounds of voices from within and god only knew how many emotions and sensations spilling with those voices out through the cracks to be taken away by the shadows outside.

The driver pulls his hat down over his ears, turns the horses and rides back into the dark.

__x__


	18. Anatole, July 1802

 

**Anatole, July 1802**

“This city –” Hélène rolls her eyes, coming through the door like a breath of loud fresh air into the warm afternoon of the room. She shakes her head, palms held upwards to a heaven she has no belief in – “It’s crazy! _Vraiment – entierement impossible!”_ Anatole laughs at her as she throws herself down on the sofa. For all her near-constant complaining – bordering sometimes on utter histrionics – he has never seen her more consistently relaxed, so openly and honestly herself as she has been in these short sweet summer months. And if it was only that and nothing else, he would already consider Budapest the most beautiful city in the world.

“I think I could live here forever,” he shrugs, yawning lazily.

“Forever?” she blinks at him, leaning forward to take a drink from a tankard of wine someone has left on the coffee table – “In rooms like _this –_ in a place made up of squares!”

“Squares?”

“Yes! Everywhere you go in this city you can take three turns left at any minute and end up exactly back where you started! Every time – it’s not natural! It’s so – so technical.”

She sighs enormously, fanning herself unnecessarily with her hand.

“So – what you’re saying –” Dolokhov drawls from the breakfast table, “Is you don’t like it because it makes logical sense.”

“Are you still here?” she raises an eyebrow, half smiling. “Don’t you have anywhere else to be? Ugh, this wine tastes so- grapey!”

“Magical,” Dolokhov grunts. “You know wine is actually _made of grapes_ don’t you, princess?”

“Well, that’s no excuse.”

“So. The city’s too square and the wine tastes too much like the stuff it was made from. Anatole darling, pass me the brandy, your sister’s killing me.”

Anatole wishes happily – as he often does these days – that he could freeze this moment like a tableau  - this warm soft early afternoon, redolent of wine and tobacco smoke, jasmine in the courtyard and a fresh, almost pleasantly pungent air off the Danube slipping through the open window; all of it so pleasant to his tingling senses. It feels as though this summer has brought him out into the world for the first time, and he would like this sense of life and freedom to last forever. It feels just now as though it could. Hélène, he thinks, worries too much about the future, Dolokhov looks back too darkly at the past. He does not see the need to ever waste his present thinking about either and wonders if this tendency to focus almost solely upon what is happening in the now is its own special kind of cognisance. Sometimes; not often, but at times like this, he feels himself to be remarkably clever for enjoying himself so much.

And why not? he thinks. He always imagined life could be like this. His disposition is too happy for the world to waste it by making his life a sad one. He always imagined things would turn out well and they always do seem to. Even if this specific state of being cannot last forever, as Hélène says it cannot, he cannot imagine an unpleasant alternative. He does not imagine an alternative at all; there does not seem to be any need.

He looks from one to the other of his people and smiles fondly. It does not get much better than this; listening to them bicker happily at each other whilst they lounge with nowhere to be. He suspects Hélène misses it sometimes, but he cannot say just now that he does. Waking up with them, dwelling on so many pleasant sensations, exploring the city by day and night – when they can be bothered, nobody to tell him what to do or not to do beyond Dolokhov’s gentle reminders as to how they spend their money. He finds himself not wanting much more than this at all. Not for now.

Dolokhov is not always here, of course. He comes and goes. Anatole would no sooner ask him where or why any more than Dolokhov would dare ask how he would choose if he ever had to choose between them. The question only occurs to him as a comparison because Hélène _has_ asked it. He did not answer it, frowning and asking her why she would worry about something so utterly ridiculous – ridiculous because there could be no circumstance he can imagine that would ever test the question. He cannot even understand why she would bother worrying enough to ask.

Either way; when he is here, it is good, and when he is not it is still good. Hélène gets frustrated sometimes, he knows, with nowhere to go and nobody – as he pointed out - to tell her how beautiful she is. He would have thought he did that enough for the whole world and has told her so on numerous occasions. She smiles and blossoms under compliments and nowadays she does not dismiss them just because they are _only_ from him. She smiles a lot all the same, these days – at least when she thinks he is not looking - and that tells him as much as needs to know.

Remarkable, he thinks; to be in a strange place, where nobody knows who they are, where they can hold hands, and touch and kiss and if anyone sees they will only wonder at how sweet, how perfect and how beautiful the young couple are. It is wonderful to him to be unknown, to be no more than what the people who see them think them to be. He likes this more than almost anything, aching with pride at being able to call her his, to not have to hide. It always felt unnatural to not be able to touch her when every impulse was to do so, in public or otherwise, even if just to stroke her arm or brush a strand of hair out of her eyes. He ignores the fact that this feeling of naturalness comes only from living under a protective blanket of lies. _Lies_ is too strong a word, he thinks. They let people make their own assumptions without correcting them; that is all. He forgets sometimes that she wears a ring on her wedding finger to encourage these assumptions.

They do not really go anywhere particular, to the opera sometimes, or out for dinner; though Dolokhov is constantly reminding them of the need not to spend money – he cannot really think why, although at the same time he cannot be bothered to get into a more than childish argument about it. They walk over the bridge and into the better side of town to look out over the river from the Citadel hill. It is sweet up here with overhanging trees and night blossoming flowers, _like we’re becoming,_ Hélène says one evening. Up in the windy winding paths they can walk and kiss without ever being seen, whispering all the same because the place seems to ask for it. Hélène looks out across the river and over to where their apartment lies, muttering about why Dolokhov had to get them a place on the wrong side of the river. He can see what she means and it _is_ like two cities in one place, the crumbling grandeur of Buda and the burgeoning squalor of Pest. You can smell garlic on the street just outside their front door, hear women in the tenements over from the opera house singing at all hours, bursts of music and tavern smells skittering down the street like rats. He supposes it _is_ the poor side of town, but cannot bring himself to a sense of guilt for liking it.

Here around the Citadel the churches crowd like old men around the bar and the river glitters, stinking in the sun. The white turrets of the bastion blind the eye at day but shiver like a ghost at night and everything is black and green and gold, lying on the grass where the hill slopes away and the shadows of the mountains and flowers in his sister’s hair and a thousand times _I love you_ that drop so easily here without the need to check the words from running uncatchable from the tongue.

Hélène says it’s like a dream but it seems to him like living.

And then there are the days they go nowhere, sometimes never even leaving the bed. It is beyond splendid to have the luxury of this option. The landlords do not bother them and the other tenants of the apartment block leave them to themselves, expecting them to be a newly married couple and smiling indulgently at them when they do come out in public. Sometimes Hélène trails out of bed at around noon and he finds her leaning on the wrought iron balcony overlooking the central courtyard, dressing gown trailing on the cracked tiled floors. He could imagine her like this forever, like a story, her hair tumbling down her back, one white arm on the black flaking railing. She is never even surprised when he joins her, but he knows that she is smiling when he slides an arm around her waist, kisses the top of her head, breathing in the smell of her hair and the midday sunshine, greeting her with a murmured _darling_ and nothing else. He can stay still like this until she finally moves to go back inside and she laughs at him saying it is the only time he _can_ stand still.

The apartment is a permanent mess – _of course,_ as Dolokhov frequently tells them. They go out for food more often than not, and leave the bags and wrapping everywhere, cleaning only in bursts when it seems amusing to do so. Anatole has tried cooking but for some reason Hélène generally tries to talk him out of it. He watches Dolokhov cook instead – he at least seems to have some skill with it. Unexpected skill, Anatole thinks – and a knack for making something delicious out of really very little. Fedya rolls his eyes at Anatole when he sits at the kitchen table watching him at the oven, tells him it is like having a child and asks him if he wants to help by licking out the bowl. He supposes it took him longer than it should have to realise he had not necessarily meant this offer literally.

Some late mornings Hélène takes a step out of the bedroom, announces –“No, I don’t think so,” and comes straight back to bed. They laugh beneath the light sheets like children, drinking wine in bed and leaving bottles across the floor. He could watch her forever lying around in the tangled sheets, explore her soft indolent softness idly at first until a more urgent need takes over. He tries to remember a time when he did not want her, was not at least half obsessed with her. He is not sure it ever existed. Sometimes it frightens him to want her so much after so long, his heart fluttering, body rocked by the force of everything he wants.

These days are a sweet ride of sensation and discovery, every sweet and often repeated action feeling like a new and surprising joy each time.

“I could go for forever like this,” he says, and Hélène smiles at him – he cannot help but think there is something sorrowful in that smile, the same smile Dolokhov gives him too when he hears him utter the sentiment. He knows that their sorrow is wrong, that there is no need for it, that these happy carefree weeks and months can be theirs forever. He imagines them continuing this way until they are quite old and they indulge him in these imaginings even though he knows they are exchanging some kind of look over his head.

He knows they want to tell him again that these days are a sweet dream from which they will have to eventually wake up, but he still feels as though he is the only one who is really awake.

“It’s wonderful,” Hélène says, overlooking the courtyard one afternoon, her head nestling back against his chest. “It’s like a – a hiatus from real life.”

He smiles and shakes his head at her knowing better –

“It is real life,” he says.

__x__

**Well that wandered into the realms of domestic fluff didn’t it? God I wish this could happen. Ugh, can I just write happy times forever? I want it to end here now please.**


	19. Hélène, November, 1802

**Hélène, November, 1802**

 

Anatole says she thinks too much, and she imagines he must be right because he seems happier than she is for thinking less. No, she is happy in this strange holiday state of being – it would be wrong to say that she was not-but she wonders why she has to make every lovely thing less lovely for herself by knowing that it has to come to an end. She does not feel the same way about sad things, and wonders if that makes her interminably sad on a level too deep for her to reach. _Real life_ as people talk about it – living in the real world – funny how they only seem to reference it in terms to bad things, when the real world can be so wonderful as well. Maybe Anatole does know better, lives better, than she does. She languishes in a state of bliss; always afraid of when it will end, afraid that she is doing happiness wrong.

She watches the others, in these days of domesticity – Dolokhov, she realises, is always doing something useful, even when he is pretending not to. He writes – she never knows what; cooks and fixes things, and disappears for days and weeks at a time on whatever mysterious adventures he endeavours. She gets frustrated with Anatole for not being more curious about it, but will never for herself just come out and ask Dolokhov where he has been, and he never rises to her not-quite questions and tactful probing. He sees straight through her. Well, it is half of what she likes about him anyway. And Anatole – Anatole just exists; he makes an art out of living. She imagines the whole world could be happier, better even, if they followed his example.

For herself she has built up so many masks, so many layers of penetrating the social structure around her that now, finding herself with no other task than enjoying life, she fears she is wasting her talents. The masks, the society, the permanent juggling act – it is what she is good at, just as Anatole has his happiness and Dolokhov his industriousness. She is torn; knowing that she has always hated putting these skills of hers to work and missing the need to do so now that she does not. She feels guilty for missing it – the ballrooms, the soirees, her life lead inside a facet of crystal, a dazzling light tracing a path to the stars. She tries to explain it to Anatole, but it is like running up against a wall, a wall with the mantra _just be happy_ written across it to the exclusion of all else.

“You don’t have to dazzle with all those other stars,” Anatole says, finally, smiling at her because it is obvious to him. “You shine so bright you already half blind me.”

“That’s – lovely –” she sighs – “But it’s – I don’t know – this – living like this – it’s like living in a shadow.”

“Then you’ll shine all the brighter,” Anatole grins at her so sunnily she cannot help but smile. “And we’ll all get more joy out of your light.”

There is a funny sort of wisdom in Anatole’s simplicity and it pacifies her overworking mind for more than a little while.

The warm summer days pass in a haze of loveliness; if they are still living in the shadows then she begins to imagine the shadows are all gold. But as September crawls to a close it brings contention gusting through the cracks in their flat along with the cold autumn air.

It is the cold that brings on most of the early arguments. Money is finally becoming an issue they cannot avoid and there is nothing that seems more unnatural to Hélène than huddling under a blanket because they cannot afford a consistent heating supply. One day in October, pretending to sleep on the sofa, she even hears Anatole argue with Dolokhov about it, a thing she had never imagined she would hear.

“You knew this would happen eventually –”

“No I didn’t! I didn’t know anything about it! Why should it come to it eh, why didn’t you tell me?”

“I _did_ tell you. Repeatedly. You chose not to listen. Anatole, there’s a point where persistent ignorance and unwillingness to accept the facts stops being as charming as you think it is.”

“I – I don’t know what you’re talking about. Just tell me what I should do.”

“You say you’ve tried to draw on your allowance?”

“Yes. Father’s cut us off. Just as of last week –”

“And naturally you’ve told her about this –”

“Of course I haven’t – I – how do I – I thought maybe you could –”

“Oh no you don’t. This is your mess. I said I’d help you as much as I could – that doesn’t mean financing the two of you indefinitely through your mutual ignorance.”

A long, near silence, in which she could hear Anatole breathing heavily.

“You can stop pouting. It won’t stop you needing to find a job.”

“A _job?_ Are you serious? _You_ get a job –”

“I am _not_ your servant, nor am I your serf, Anatole Kuragin. In fact, do you know – I’m gone. I’m out of here. Sort out your own mess for once.”

“But I – _fine!”_ She finally sat up, realising it was no longer practical to pretend to be asleep beneath the sounds of Anatole’s shouting – “Go then! See if I care! We didn’t need you anyway!”

Dolokhov closed his eyes wearily, opened them again, looked at her, stretching and sitting up on the sofa –

“You heard everything I suppose? Anything to add?”

“- and don’t let the door hit you on the way out!” Anatole finished, still shouting.

“Like that, for example?”

Dolokhov threw his coat on jerkily, angrier she could tell, than his tone, so much more measured than Anatole’s, would suggest.

“Fedya –” she began in a sigh. Dolokhov waved a hand at her dismissively and stormed out the room.

“Idiot!” she snapped at Anatole, leaving after Dolokhov, catching him by the arm already half way down the stairs. He resisted for a moment before turning to her, lips pressed thinly together, nostrils flaring.

“I’m sorry –” she said – “He doesn’t mean it – you know he doesn’t. We need you – both of us –”

“Hélène –” he shook his head. She was alarmed to see that he was blinking back tears, something raw and open in his voice she never normally heard – “No. If you knew how much I thought about hearing either of you say that – and meaning it –”

“I _do_ mean it.”

“- meaning it not just because you need me to get you out of a mess – I can’t, I’m sorry – I _can’t._ I –”

“I know –” she felt herself in terrible danger of crying, tightness in her throat – “I love you too, Fedya.” He looked at her, positively startled, though no more than she was to have heard herself say it.

“Anatole –” she began but they were interrupted by the sound of something smashing in the room above.

 “Go on –” Dolokhov sighed – “Go. Sort him out. Don’t be too angry with him. _Hélène –”_ he insisted, seeing the dark look in her eyes that suggested she might ignore that last order – “Look after him.”

She sighed, enormously –

“I always do. I’m sorry Fedya – it had to –”

“Hush. We knew this. You and I, we’ll be alright. I won’t be far. Here –” He scribbled something down for her on a scrap of paper – “I’ll help you when you need to get home.”

Her face prickled. She had never been the one to just hide her tears in someone’s shoulder before, she had always been the shoulder herself. She did it now, pressing her forehead into the rough fabric of Dolokhov’s greatcoat as he hugged her hard and tight before letting her go.

She had thought she was going to go back to their rooms and scream at Anatole but he had looked at her with such big teary eyes, announcing petulantly, lower lip trembling –

“He doesn’t love me anymore,” that all she could do was sigh deeply, tell him what an absolute idiot he was and hold him all but in her lap like she had done a thousand times.

In the end they did what she had known they would have to do eventually, almost from the start – they made arrangements to go home. Hélène penned a tentative letter to their father testing for his response, giving him the address Dolokhov had given her rather than their own, uncertain as to whether or not he would have just swooped down on them himself or sent people to fetch them home immediately. He did not do either of these things, but accepted her stated intention for them to return home at the beginning of November with cordial if strained enthusiasm. It seemed to Hélène to be a worryingly lenient response; Anatole, of course, just revelled in the fact that they seemed to have got off quite lightly with, as he called it their _prank._

Strangely, the two weeks left to them before the deadline once they had it are the weeks in which Hélène is happier – possibly, she thinks than she has been her whole life. Once resigned and aware of how this will end, and able to speak of it freely without it being a cloud over their heads – she gives herself up to the freedom of these numbered weeks.

Dolokhov returns to them. _Of course_ – she remarks archly – smiling at him when he comes back through their door as though she could not have cared if he came or went. It is barely a week since he stormed out on them and Anatole, never one to bear a grudge greets him only with delight at his return, throwing himself into Dolokhov’s arms almost the second he walks through the door.

“I’m sorry,” he babbles like a child who thinks that all he ever has to do is say sorry for everything to be forgiven – “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it at all”.

Dolokhov shakes his head in a way Hélène recognises from the number of times she has done it – in that way which implies a sighing and an understanding that there is nothing else to do with the boy but forgive him. She smiles as they fold into each other and with a tact and discretion surprising even herself she gets up quietly and leaves them to it.

“You know –” Dolokhov says later, the three of them half asleep and exhausted, Hélène curled warmly between her two dear boys, wondering if she will ever be quite as sublimely happy as this again – “You know this won’t be the last time don’t you? It’s not as though there won’t always be ways to make this happen, even back home.”

“Do you think so?” Anatole blinks at him with wide trusting eyes, even though he has been the one, more than any of them, fucking as though it was the last chance he would have. Hélène just smiles, wanting it to be true and too sleepy and satisfied to want to think otherwise.

“Dear ones,” Dolokhov’s lips twitch in half a smile and she thinks, just now, that it is the best answer she has ever heard.

On one of their last nights, Dolokhov leaves them to go out alone, and they head across the river and up the citadel for the last time. She tries not to think about it too much – walking out hand in hand like this. It has become almost familiar, almost normal in this too short half a year. But of course it has; it is how they were meant to be, the two of them and Dolokhov living like this. She wonders if there was any way it could have been forever and supposes not, not unless they were all of them different people, prepared for more or other than they were. She supposes it is weakness, drawing them out of their comfortable shadows and back into the bright lights of home. But she knows she has to be there, in the centre of that light, even if she cannot be happier there.

She twists her fingers tighter around his, rests her head on her shoulder as they walk, aware of awkwardness in walking like this, feeling her hair shift across her shoulders It seems tonight as though she can feel everything, see all the details around them more clearly than usual, as though the colours of the world around her had become more distinct, the outlines of everything sharper, moonlight on the black leaves in the bushes around them, the silver thread of the path before them and behind and Anatole – always. But then, he was always distinct. At the top of her awareness she thinks about how beautiful they are; a tingling consciousness of it all over her skin that must flow into his through their fingertips. She has often been unaware what parts of them belong to who, and likes the feeling. She knows that even back home they will look this beautiful together even if it will not be quite the same.

They stand for a long time on the top of the hill, silent and curled in close against the wind, looking out on the city in what they know is a farewell until, without discussing it, they turn around and start back down the hill. Not ten paces down Anatole stops, turns, looks at her with something he is clearly desperate to say clamouring to come out.

“I wish –” he says in an impulsive burst but cannot get beyond it; she understands of course – there is too much to wish. She reads the confusion of trying to express so much in his face and shakes her head in pain –

“Don’t” she says, strained, but –

“I wish –” he says again. It hurts her head to hear. She shakes her head while the terrible words hand around their heads like wasps refusing to leave them.

“If –” he tries again. She understands suddenly how difficult this is – for Anatole who has never lived on wishes, never wanted anything he could not have – or at least has not known it – not _really_ known it when he has. To want to be other than what he is is unutterably foreign to him.

“If I were not myself –” he struggles – “If I was anyone else – anyone at all – I would get down on my knees right here and ask you to marry me. It would be the place for it, wouldn’t it? We _should_ be married, like I always said.”

“But if you were someone else –” she says gently – “I would say no.”

“And if I was myself and I asked?”

“You know I would still say no.”

“It’s not _fair,”_ he sticks his lip out stubbornly, like when he was a child, she sighs, sent to his room without supper. She wants to be impatient, wants to tell him _life’s not fair! For god’s sake – how have you gone so long imagining that it is?_ It is almost ridiculous to her, when she has burned under these injustices, knowing them in her heart for so long, wanting to fight and knowing she could not. Ridiculous yes, but she cannot help but love him for it.

“No,” she says in the end and only that – “It’s not fair.”

“I _like_ being me,” he adds, petulantly – “And I like being you – oh hell –I mean I like you being you. I don’t want you to not be my sister but –” he frowns, knowing he is saying it wrong even though she understands him perfectly – “But sometimes I do. Want that. Does that make sense?”

“Yes,” she smiles at how simple he makes it sound – all of the wishes and the useless agonising that has tramped in complicated lines through her heart and mind for so long. She smiles with tears in her eyes – “Yes it does.” She leans up and kisses his cheek; he presses his forehead crookedly against hers;

“I want so much,” he grumbles.

“Yes,” she smiles more happily this time – _you wouldn’t be yourself if you didn’t,_ she thinks – “Yes, you always do.”

“It’s not bad though, is it?” there is the hint of a question in his voice but she can hear that it is really not a question in his mind.

“No dearest,” she shakes her head – “No, it’s not bad.”

They walk on together hand in hand and for some reason his smile has returned and that usual jaunty step, even though nothing has actually been resolved. Once again they do not speak though the silence is pleasant and does not really feel like silence. She wonders if he could really ever do anything bad, given that there could never be any badness sin his intentions. She wonders and she wishes.

She tries not to but she wishes for so much.

__x__


	20. Vasili, November, 1803

 

**Vasili, November, 1803**

 

He finds himself using what little his daughter gave him repeatedly over the half year and more that they are gone. _Gone travelling,_ he replies in answer to all the increasingly arch questions he receives as to his children’s whereabouts; their sudden disappearance from society. People, to his continual irritation, like to think of it as suspicious and mysterious, and the fact that they are not wholly wrong in these assumptions does little to make him feel better. Worse, it seems that everything that he had feared was painfully obvious between them really had been quite obvious after all; as the exact rumours start that he had dreaded most of all – dreaded most of all because the truth was harder to avoid than the scandalous lie most of the people who spread it still genuinely thought it to be.

He repeats his daughter’s words to him so many times, embellishing it as needed with details as to their travels that he does not have, having never heard from them since. He repeats them to himself most of all, trying to tell himself that this answer really is all there is, that there is foolishness in it but no calamitous intent. Sometimes he repeats it to himself in all different tones of anger, knowing what they mean by it and furious that they would dare. Either way, he tears the words to shreds over and over again.

The lack of any specifics – any time frame, any clue as to when or if they will return, niggles him most of all. In the early weeks he finds himself expecting them home almost every day, as though they had just gone on an excursion to one of their other estates and will just reappear at any moment. He wishes he could simply feel their absence with a vague and normal kind of loneliness – just to miss them like any parent would with their children having finally left the house. He wonders what that would be like. Sometimes he wonders if he is not a terrible parent more for not simply allowing them whatever it is that constitutes happiness no matter what it is and as such when he finally brings himself to cut them off from any hint of the family finances half a year later it is with a confusing combination of guilt and hope. The one in doing what he has no doubt will make them unhappy and the other that this will make them come home again, although he suspects that too will not particularly please them.

When he receives Helene’s letter in mid-October then, it is with far more of relief than any other of these potential emotions. She writes guardedly of course, but at the same time he can almost hear her voice in the words. It occurs to him that guarded is the only way he has seen her since she was the smallest child and even then she must have learnt to dissemble at almost the same rate at which she learnt to talk. Words and lies are similar tools to her; well, he suspects he knows where she gets that from.

He wonders how to play his response as he calculates every move he makes. She says nothing of what they have been doing or how they are, simply that they intend on coming home in early November _if it would be both agreeable and acceptable to yourself, papa_ and she leaves an address in Hungary that he suspects, if he can gauge her correctly – he is never sure he can - is not where they are staying. He wonders, not for the first time, how they planned all this; who has helped them, how they have lived. Behind it all he wonders, with infinite whispering dread, whether or not they have somehow married.

He thinks for exactly two days before sitting down to write out his reply. He suspects, when all is said and done, that in his balancing act between good father and model citizen, withering disgust and incompetent affection he has, as usual, been too lenient. But it occurs to him on the whole that they need not accept whatever answer he gives them and if he can just get them home first he can settle the matter later. He wonders if he should send Anatole away again, he wonders if he would go if he did. He cannot imagine either of them openly arguing with him but he can no longer imagine either of them meekly accepting his instructions without some back up plan of their own anymore.

He finds himself surprised by the tenderness with which he receives Helene’s second letter; this feeling of pleasure that after so long with nothing he should get a second letter from her at all and that one acquiescing to his acceptance of their return. He is not sure he has manoeuvred as carefully in conversations with military strategists as he does with his own daughter. He wonders if this is how all parents feel with their children. He wonders if one ever stops thinking of them as children.

On the day of their return, he hears them before he sees them; his daughter’s voice in the hall, clear and laughing, echoing and high –

“Oh my goodness – _warmth!”_

“I’d almost forgotten what it was like!” Both their voices, nothing changed, laughing as carelessly as though they really have only been away on the most innocuous of trips. He hears them whispering as they come through into the drawing room, and this too is both depressingly and also reassuringly familiar. He takes a deep breath and stands up to greet them. It is not hard to look stern; he hopes it is the way his face has settled, and not just into an expression of anger, or worse, lenience. Perhaps he has misjudged after all because there is a distant smile that does not shift from Helene’s face and Anatole has a look of merriment in his eye that is almost insolence.

“Anatole.” He nods at them stiffly – “Helene. It’s good to see you back.” He stops, awkward. They do not make it easier for him – he suspects that is intentional – staring back at him, smiles unwavering, looking at him only as though they are curious to see what he will do next. It is the same curious look he has seen Anatole as a child give to an exotic animal on those occasions they have had to see them, interested to see what it will do next. He feels himself excruciatingly on display. It is not how he had imagined it, and he had imagined it so many different ways. After a too long silence they exchange a fraction of a look and he reads the question clear enough in Helene’s eyes _shall we help him?_ and Anatole, just as barely perceptibly nods.

“It’s good to be home,” she says, eyes clear and focused and quite clearly lying.

“Can I have my allowance back now?” Anatole is more straightforward though he asks it cheerfully, without a hint of bitterness, merely as though he has had it taken away for a few days for some mild misdemeanour. He catches Helene shooting her brother just the faintest of glares.

“Of course,” he smiles, taking his cues in smiling without meaning it from her. He supposes he has taught her this for long enough it is now her turn to teach him his own tricks. He finds himself respecting her cold false courtesy more than Anatole’s blunt honestly “More than that –” he adds – “I’ve acquisitioned a house for you near the barracks. After you’re settled you can start moving in. Soon,” he adds pointedly. Anatole smiles, and for the first time he sees something of Helene in that smile – something sly and narrow eyed, containing more understanding than he is used to seeing from his son.

“Really? My own. You’re too kind, papa.”

Vasily reassesses his judgement – he does not like Anatole when he is lying any more than he does when the boy is being honest. Helene says nothing, only mirroring her brother’s obsequious smile with nothing whatsoever behind the eyes. It is all too easy to see how little they have been apart in the months they have been away, more in sync than ever and consequently unnerving him more, he supposes, than he should let himself be unnerved. He knows, just looking at them, that trying to use force to insist on this stopping completely will do nothing more than drive them away again. It is exhausting, he thinks, to have to play a role as terrible as the one they are forcing upon him; to have to destroy all their chances of happiness. But it unthinkable to do otherwise.

“Yes. Well –” he is conscious of many levels of inadequacy – “No doubt you’ve had a long journey – you should –”

“Yes, papa” – from Anatole, a “Thank you papa,” from Helene even though he has not really said anything, but Anatole is gone as though he had actually given them the leave to go he had only been implying. Helene is almost out the door too before he calls her back –

“Helene - a moment?”

“Yes papa?” Her eyes wide, her voice clear and crystalline, sharp and bright and innocent.

“There’s just one thing I have to ask –”

“Yes papa?” exactly the same, not a half note of inflection different from the first time she said it.

“Did you –” he begins, suddenly not sure he can do this after all – “Just tell me you didn’t –” _please don’t be_ – but god, now that it is here he cannot say the word, just looks down pointedly at her hands still clasped neatly in front of her and the ring on her finger. She follows his gaze and the hand under scrutiny clenches into a little tight fist. She twists at the ring, pulling it off resignedly to hold it in that fist. For the first time she looks guilty – or if not quite guilty then caught out; like a card player who has shown their hand too soon.

“Oh,” she says, her expression flickering briefly then settling again as she looks up at him again, shrugging one shoulder – “No. No not really.” She looks down again.

“Go on.” He sits down at his desk heavily, waving her out, noticing that she leaves this time as fast as she can without running before he can ask her anything else. He wishes he knew what _not really_ means, wishes he could talk to her. Wishes he knew what he wanted – if it is different children or for himself to be a different father. _God,_ he thinks – _it starts again then, this dance ._ He thought he had forgotten the steps. He is not happy to find himself falling into step so easily once more.

__x__


	21. Dolokhov, November 1805

**Dolokhov, November 1805**

_Once again,_ he thinks; _once again we all fall together. Whatever anyone does to the contrary, however hard the world tries its hand against us. We fall where we were meant to fall._ And is this it, he wonders- between these two but never separating them? Hélène curled against his back with her nose in the back of his neck and Anatole, _my Anatole_ he thinks, with a sudden wave of half-drunk possessiveness – here, where he should be, inside the curve of his arm. He suspects he may need to be there for him more than ever in the weeks to come. _God, can’t I love too much? Does it never end?_ It hurts his head to feel so hard and to think about it like this, he must have drank a ridiculous amount for it to have touched him like this tonight. Another wild, beautiful night of Anatole’s devising and his arrangement, Hélène creeping in in the early hours of morning before they have quite gone to bed, picking their way through the drunken scenery of guests scattered around the house like so much party debris.

They have almost, he realises, fallen into a routine over these last two years. _Almost_ , he thinks; for what’s a routine? A way of life? Routines are like regimes, they rise and fall, the pattern of an individual life no more constant than the pattern of a nation. They have had ways of being before, in Budapest, in the months before, in the army. Everything before the army seems like a far distant past, not worth the contemplation – certainly not just now. Is that how he has come to see it, he wonders – everything divided into life before and after Anatole? Is it that bad?

And after all is he wrong in his wider speculation? Why does it always catch him like this? After hours, when the others are asleep. He always falls asleep last and wakes first, their lazy lifestyle never quite suiting him as much as part of him would like it to suit him. Well, it is true for him, like everything is true only to the one who thinks it. He supposes that for many people, their way of life never changes; there is no upheaval that really routes them, certainly in any long term, from the general concerns of daily life and the way of that life itself. One is not encouraged to rise above their station. He has never been sure what he likes less – the common herd who never try or the people at the top who try to keep them in place.

He likes the routine they live in now as much as anything- more than a lot of things. Likes it and respects that this too will not last. He finds he enjoys impermanence, almost as much as it depresses Hélène. She never says it does but he knows. He knows how she struggles not to worry about what will be; hurting herself with her own nonchalance, a thing she forces upon herself so well half the time she really does not care at all. If their roles had been reversed – if he had been born to their privileges, he imagines he would have ended up more like her than like Anatole. At the same time she frustrates him; she knows she is a commodity in the eyes of her family and of society and rather than fight it, she works with it. Works with it so well society is almost more her tool than she is it. He is still not sure; he thinks he might have fought it.

He remembers arguing with her some months ago now. She had been angry, not for the first time, after her father had tried to press her about marriage. She had turned up at the house – Anatole’s house - though he spent so much time here it was starting to feel like home – railing about it for the umpteenth time. Anatole had refused to listen – he always did when the subject came up, and once again she had got all the more irritated by the ease with which he brushed it off as he brushed off anything he did not like and did not want to think about. He had tried to stay out of it at first but, inevitably they had started screaming at each other, forgetting that he was even there – he half understood – nobody could fight like siblings could fight, and most did not have the extra layers of relationship that they did. It had ended as it almost always ended in Anatole pacing, Hélène’s face taking on that look of waxy implacability that they both liked least in her as he raged, flailed and eventually sighed –

“Can we just _not_ talk about this?”

“You always say that,” she came back for the millionth time – “Every time. Do you think I’d be so angry to begin with if we could actually _just not_ as you so moronically put it?”

“I did _not!”_

“Yes you did. You always do. You’re infuriating –” the worst thing was how she said it so calmly.

“ _You’re_ infuriating.” Anatole did _not_ say it calmly.

“Do you know I live in constant hope that one day you’ll actually grow up?”

“Shut up shut up! I don’t _want_ to grow up if I have to listen to stuff like this!”

“One day you’ll have to listen! Or you’ll be standing like a plank at my wedding wondering what the hell just hit you!”

“I don’t –” Anatole’s face was blotchy and lived, his hand trembling around the stem of a wine glass, glaring at her as though he would like to strangle her.

“You’d think I could at least get to be the one who can be upset about it since I’m the one who has to sleep with some imbecile.”

“ _Just don’t!”_ Anatole roared it this time, hurled his glass into the fireplace and stormed out of the room.

“He has a point, you know,” Dolokhov said, quietly into the silence that followed, aware that he should probably not.

“Oh don’t you bloody start,” she groaned, closing her eyes and sighing heavily, mechanically pouring a glass of wine from the bottle Anatole had mercifully left on the table.

“You do this every few days,” he said patiently, supposing he might as well continue now that he had started – “It always goes the same way. Have you ever considered he might have a point?”

“Oh you always stand up for him – you –”

Dolokhov raised his hands in a mock surrender that was not entirely a mock.

“I’m not taking sides. But did you ever just say no to your father?”

“I do. Just about every day. How do you think I got to this age and I’m still not married? People talk, you know.”

“And that’s more important to you than being happy, is it?”

“You don’t understand, you’re not –” she paused, frowned, made a slight noise of disgust at herself and finished nonetheless – “You’re not a woman.”

“You know, you could –” he stared, stopped, realised what he was about to say and almost laughed.

“What?” she looked at him, curious.

“You could marry me.”

“Well –” she laughed – “That has to be the least romantic proposal I ever had. Thank you.”

“It was a thought. Better than another “just don’t” surely?”

This time they both laughed, though it was a strange kind of laugh undercut with uneasiness and a guilty regret he knew neither of them would admit to. She shook her head –

“I couldn’t marry you any more than I could marry Anatole,” she sighed, and this time she did not hide the regret in her face. He watched her lips pull, then her shoulders heave and that bright social smile creep wryly back to her lips – “But it was nice of you to ask. You should probably go and see how he is.”

“ _You_ should probably go see how he is.”

“No I don’t want to. You go.”

“You two –” he slouched back hard in his chair staring at the ceiling as though for inspiration, taking a deep breath and getting up – “I’m going.”

He put his hand on her shoulder gently as he passed by her chair and she leaned her face into it with a sweet, almost painful familiarity.

“He’ll get there, you know,” he said. She did not look at him, eyes shifting off as to the side as she replied dully;

“No. He won’t.”

And she was right. He had known it even when he was telling her the consoling lie. Anatole was not going to accept a truth so against his hopes until, as she had said, her wedding day. He found himself stuck, as usual, between feeling both of their different frustrations about it. At the same time he _did_ imagine life with himself married to Helene, Sometimes it was a beautiful dream, the three of them living together as they sometimes pretended to do now – but more often the practicalities came first. He knew neither of them was prepared to be cut off from the wealth and status they were used to and while he found himself sometimes disgusted by this he knew that he for one was not prepared to work to support them. They all had lengths to which they would not go for each other, but it surprised him to realise that this did not make anybody’s feelings the weaker.

There is a fine line, he reflects, between innocence and ignorance, and Anatole balances on that line in perpetual motion. It is both infuriating and adorable. He wonders why it _is_ adorable, he does not think it would be in somebody he did not love; he wonders every day how he came to love someone so infuriating and how it can not only have stayed this way but deepened to the point where he knows he cannot extract either of them from his heart without bleeding internally. He does what he does from his vantage point, which is also a disadvantage – finding himself simultaneously within and without the sphere of their lives – he goes along with it. At least for now. Anatole refuses to fear the future and so he does it for both of them.

Since settling in this house Anatole has stubbornly thrown himself into the process of ignoring potential problems with more effort and enthusiasm than he would have had to put into real work. Dolokhov finds himself almost permanently impressed and exasperated and at the same time willing to be complicit in this method of madness since the process is so enjoyable. The process – he is not sure why he ever did not expect it would be – is one of drink and debauchery, and they have gathered a close circle of people who will – perhaps erroneously – call themselves friends; the better to undertake this lifestyle with all imaginable energy and vigour. He is not sure whether to be amused or to despair at the speed with which they gather, almost at the same speed that they gather these friends, a reputation as utter reprobates, the ringleaders of Petersburg’s most dissolute social circle.

It occurs to Dolokhov, with the greatest amusement, that there are two great misnomers at the heart of everyone’s assumptions regarding this “new” society they have formed. His own part in it is the first one. What few people seem to realise is that for all the drink he rarely gets drunk and he finds this puts him in a remarkably advantageous position. Being the only person sober in a room full of inebriated rich boys means that he can both play them very successfully for their money – the amount they will throw away on bets and games that he can almost always win makes his head spin – and for their respect. At the same time there is always a need for the person at the party who can apparently throw off their own drunkenness at a moment’s notice enough to help a fellow who was failing. This was all the easier when the drunkenness was never there to begin with. Being that person gains him all the more respect and with the respect all the more dares and bets.

The second thing nobody quite grasps in the whole equation is Anatole. They whisper about him in polite society with more than a little mingled reproach and awe. The reputation he has gained as a notorious womanizer and all round unprincipled bounder is not entirely unfounded. Dolokhov alone has an idea of how much money he spends on women and wine. What people do not realise is that whilst the two of them certainly get through a great deal of the wine, the women are there more for the benefit of their guests. Not that they never take advantage, certainly; but Anatole is far more loyal to him and to Hélène than he has any wish for the rest of the world to know.

Hélène, to his surprise, does not seem to care either way. She laughs at them for the scandal they cause, the reputations they earn and while she is scathing about Anatole’s whores never makes any serious move to stop him. It is all as much a game to her as it is to make her own way through the maze of society. It is a maze through which she leads half of the rest of the world around her, shining a candle down its numerous twists and pathways.

The worst thing Dolokhov has noticed in the last two years is the way they have started to close off, both of them, in sometimes different, sometimes similar ways. It is not real, he knows that, internally nothing has changed; but they have both become more guarded, more cautious in expressing what used to come out so freely. Actually, if he let it be, it would be heart breaking, but they barely ever say _I love you_ anymore and it used to drop from them both so easily. He understands why, knows that to maintain an illusion of happiness, a trick they both play on themselves as much as on the rest of the world, it is impossible to admit to all that cannot be. When they do say it now it is quiet, or whispered, or expressed when they speak to him and not to each other. They say it as though it is not true, ironically or as though it is a game or sometimes, when it simply cannot be repressed at the most intimate of moments and they pretend to have not said it, not to have heard and make fun of it the day after. Incongruously perhaps they have at the same time developed new terms of endearment that drop where the missing three words no longer fall, _dearest, darling, beloved_ – they all fall like flowers in place of any more painful confession and he sees them smile on receipt of these flowers and it hurts.

Anatole, out of all of them, changes the least. He has never known anyone with such a capacity for joy, such an intense dedication to enjoying life and everything in it. He _looks_ at everything, Dolokhov has always noticed this, and more than just looking he seems to genuinely see. He goes out alone sometimes, riding in the morning or walking in the evening and more often than not brings back something pretty that has caught his eye like a magpie to its nest, interesting feathers, pretty stones, flowers for Hélène that he suspects she keeps pressed somewhere though she pretends to roll her eyes at these curious childish offerings. He does not tell Anatole either, about the stone he keeps in a coat pocket or the feather that he has used now and then as a bookmark.

“You should have seen him when he was small,” Hélène says one morning, over breakfast, Anatole having told them with ridiculous but infectious enthusiasm how shiny the water had looked that morning under the bridge. How it had shone gold in the morning light like a smooth stone and he had wanted to bring a slice of it home.

“He had to pick up _everything._ It was never enough that something just be pretty, was it dear – he had to have it. Even if it was alive.”

“Don’t you dare –” Anatole groans, sinking into his chair laughing and reaching for the tea.

“It was a _bee_ Anatole,” she grins, winking at Dolokhov. “I found him sat on the grass with a great fat bumblebee in his hand. He was only three. He cried and cried when it stung him, not because it hurt but because the bee died.”

“It was _soft,”_ Anatole whines and Dolokhov suspects they have annoyed one another with this story for years – “It looked soft and I just wanted to touch –”

“Story of your life.”   

“I didn’t _know_ it would die,” he pouts.

“He was so upset we had to have a little funeral for it and everything,” Hélène continues remorselessly, smiling. “We buried it in a match box, I think. I told him about how hives work and how the bee had died protecting what it loved.”

“I’m going to kill you,” Anatole mutters happily.

“He said he wanted to be a bee and I said I’d be his queen, remember?”

Anatole glares at her, smirking happily.

“So what’s Dolokhov?”

“You can be a drone,” she has on that playful half smirk he loves most about her.

It was one of the good mornings. There were, he reflected, quite a lot of them.

And now he lies where he often feels like he best belongs, nestled between their two heartbeats, wondering if he was the one cushioning their lives, making them easier to live or if it was the other way around. He thinks about the evening they have spent; one of more than usual intensity and near violent need. _I just don’t want anything to change,_ Anatole had said, one of the last things before he fell asleep, Hélène not replying, pretending she was already asleep herself. Dolokhov wonders how Anatole can fail to realise how many times “things” have already changed in his life. He seems to imagine things have always been the way they are now and always will be, as though _the way they are now_ is how things have always been. Hélène has told him more than once that he has always been like this. He was, as a child, she says, unaware of the consequences of growing up and Dolokhov suspects he is still wondering what it will be like and when it will happen.

This state of being has not been the worst and they have all become used to it and find ways in which to enjoy it, but yes, he supposes change is due again. It is inevitable. He finds himself selfishly almost relieved at Hélène’s timing which means that he does not have to drop his own news on them first and be the first one to break this routine by telling them of his forthcoming removal to Austria with the army. They will have to find a _new_ new way of life; he has known and accepted it anyway, ever since Hélène dropped on them the news of her engagement to Pierre Bezukhov.

__x__

**So quick note – I have this head canon about Anatole often picking flowers for Hélène that’s entirely based on the 2007 tv adaptation and not either of the sources I’ve actually tagged this fic under. I just don’t want to confuse issues of characterisation further by adding a tag for that version too, but yeah, that’s where I got that from.**


	22. Anatole, December 1805

**Anatole, December 1805**

“Father, do I have to?”

The prince looks at his son and it seems to Anatole that his eyes are remorseless, sharp, flinty twists of ice, almost as though he enjoys what he has to know he is doing.

“Yes,” Vasily nods, implacable – “Of course. It’s your sister’s wedding. Of course you have to be there.”

The handsome lips twist and pout, curling up in every twitch and action all at once. It is not as though he really thought that he could get away with it, but such considerations have not seriously stopped him from trying before.

It was somewhat of a rhetorical question anyway at this stage; standing in front of the mirror and adjusting a cravat. His father has already attempted to shame him out of his choice of attire (“It’s a wedding boy, not a funeral!”) but he is damned if he is going to make any more of a concession to this utterly awful day than he has already done. If giving up on a lifelong dream of perfect happiness can be considered a concession. He feels himself taking a pinch of bitter pride in being the only person in black amongst a sea of polite agreeable greys and creams. Besides it seems to Anatole as though funereal is all too appropriate to his feelings just at the moment. He is not sure he has ever woken up on a morning where everything felt quite so wrong as today. He is not sure he has ever felt so awful in his life, and wishes he could be melodramatic directly towards someone about it. But Helene is obviously busy and Dolokhov is in Moscow. He wishes he was here, he would tell him how better to behave or to feel. He might not listen; but Fedya would tell him all the same and he feels just now as though that could help. He hates him for not being there but he hates Helene more. He wants to kill his father and Pierre.

He has always risen above sadness before. He has kept himself happy in the same way that other men might keep themselves busy. But this is different. In spite of everything he has never really believed – not in his heart – that this would really happen. Nothing; not the engagement, not Helene’s dull acceptance or her screaming at him in frustration to try to make him understand, has really settled this inevitability in his mind as something that could really happen. Even now he cannot picture it – this wedding – the ceremony mundanely and flawlessly taking place – the staid and tiresome celebrations and everything that has to follow. He does not _want_ to picture it. He amuses himself instead picturing some last minute intervention – being the one to step forward with objections to the wedding proceeding, announcing his prior claim on her to the world. It is so ridiculous to him that this should be a problem that he cannot imagine it _really_ leading him into trouble. He can hear himself now, his voice ringing through the church, every word that makes so much more sense than the idiot things the priest will be saying, her hand beside Pierre’s. _She’s mine,_ he hears it already, in advance – _I love her –_ his chest tightens. The reality makes him sick. It is so confusing it gives him a headache – how simple and right this claim feels compared to the confounding knowledge that for some reason he cannot make it.

He makes it more romantic, more elaborate; imagines a daring rescue – shooting the priest, killing Pierre, galloping up the aisle and stealing her away, riding off in a blaze of glory. He has said these things to her already, and she always simply sighs at him and ruins it with her inevitable question _and then what?_ Every time. It annoys him beyond measure, but he grudgingly accepts the truth of it at least enough not to try. Practically the question is valid and he knows it; they have already tried just running away, it does not sustain indefinitely.

It seems monstrously unfair just now that life, as everyone always tiresomely tells him, is not a fairy tale. Helene told him fairy tales when they were little, but she had always changed them, leaving out the bit where the princess married some king or other, utterly unrelated to her. In her stories the sister always rescued her little brother – from his enchantment, from being eaten by witches, when he drank the water from the wrong well even though she told him not to – it occurs to him that these stories always had the boy do something wrong and his sister rush to his rescue. It doesn’t matter, he liked them that way, he knew what she was implying and felt secure in the knowledge that she would always rescue him. But then she stopped, she did not go on to the parts of those stories where the girl found somebody else, just left it with the brother and sister together in their happy ever after with no one else. It had been satisfying, _was_ satisfying – only he had heard since that this was not the way the stories _really_ ended. He remembers this satisfaction, nodding with it in approval, curled up against her when she told him these stories and everything felt so right.

And today everything is so wrong. He feels weighted down and drifting all at once, knowing how it really has to go and going through the motions of behaving despite every impulse to the contrary. He would like to start drinking already. But this comes next – he closes his eyes – hopes it will go away – it does not go away. Next they meet with Helene to accompany her to church. For the briefest moment when he sees her she is an angel to him in white – sunshine on snow – he remembers Dolokhov described her like that to him once and he thinks of it now – just for a moment he smiles because he has been dreaming about this for so long. But he can only have seconds of this before he remembers that she is not for him, something breaks silently in his chest. She ignores him when they come in, looks around him as though he is not there, smiling at their father and dazzling them, so silver and white. He has never turned away from something he found beautiful ever before, but he cannot look at her now. He stares sullenly off to one side until the prince hisses at him and it occurs to him that something is expected of him. She is looking at him now, but she is not looking at him, her eyes are as closed as he has ever seen them and her smile shines like broken ice. She can make the corners of her mouth turn up, even force a sparkle into her eyes but he knows her; he has never seen her more unhappy. He wishes they could have talked properly in these last few days without freezing each other out or screaming but they have not.

“Anatole, congratulate your sister.” Vasily sounds tersely irritated; no doubt, Anatole supposes, at having to prompt him every step of the way. He cares nothing for his father’s irritation, it _is_ nothing. If he can make this acceptably more difficult for the bastard then he will. He grits his teeth, embraces his sister all but at arm’s length, she is stiff and absent in his arms and somebody’s heart is breaking, he can all but hear them crack together.

“You look beautiful,” he says, stiffly; his face feels tight. She looks down.

“Thank you” she says. He balls his fists, manages not to cry.

“Yes, well,” is all their father can say and for the first time he looks away, almost guiltily. Just for a moment, with his back turned Anatole sees a flash of desperation leaping in his sister’s eyes, bright and hurting like a cut, a _help me_ she cannot say and is not permitted to mean.

“Shall we go?” she says and yes, if it must be done it should be done quickly. He gives her his arm, stops pretending, and something dies.

He stares at the floor for most of the ceremony and for the first time in weeks, now that he is actually here, he cannot bring himself to imagine the fantasies of escape that have sustained him so far. He cannot watch either, or focus, cannot think at all. He wonders if this is what she has been doing for years; cutting herself off, numbing her brain into nothingness. As soon as they reach the reception and he can, he throws himself towards the champagne and starts drinking fast, wishing it was stronger.

He closes his eyes to everything, the speeches, the noise, the brightness, all that clinking of glasses and the birdsong of senseless chatter. He has never felt so far from himself, never gone so against his own nature as to shut out sensation. He tries to remember all the sensible logical things they have discussed before now, all the ways they have tried to make this bearable; how nothing will really change, how little dominance Pierre is capable of asserting, how easily she will still be able to come and go just as when she was living in her father’s house, how this marriage, this stranger in their lives has no bearing on her feelings, they never change.

 _Never change._ They become the words that clang around his head; he seems to find them at the bottom of every glass. He can see his sister laughing in memory, her hand against his face, amused with the child he always is – _darling, never change._ Dolokhov too, smiling at him in the light of an early morning with fond, narrow-eyed appraisal, shaking his head tolerantly at something ridiculous Anatole has said. _You’re an idiot Anatole – never change._ All of their love, all their kisses and fondness and wishes for him – it should be enough to shield him from everything; he knows they want to protect him from the world, knows how loved he is, how treasured. Just now, it is not enough. Just now he cannot be the child he always is. It is not because he doubts even that they can make another way of being it is simply this – the destruction of a dream. He never really knew it was foolish up until now, however often she tried to tell him so. A part of him had always known they would marry and be together forever. He hates her for knowing otherwise.

When the bubbles start clouding his brain he loses focus on everything except for her. It is not surprising, he has always held her focus even after losing his own – but where it used to be a comfort just now it does nothing but sting. Bright and white, she cuts a tear in his perception, sharp against the blurry softness around him. He smashes a glass he did not mean to smash, says something over-loud, touching on just what he thinks of Pierre just now. His hand tightens around another glass, he thinks about crushing this one inwards, grinding glass between his fingers. He cannot hear the people around him until –

“Anatole.”

It sounds far away. He smiles vaguely, realising with pleasure that he has managed to get more drunk on champagne than he thought he could.

“ _Anatole!”_

Helene. She is closer to him than he realised; suddenly beside him and he reaches to touch her, not registering the look on her face. She steps away, grabs him by the arm, not gently, though she holds back for appearances sake, pinching him surreptitiously on the underarm, her smile fixed beneath her fuming eyes. He lets her lead him, not knowing where until he registers that they are somewhere quiet, a room off from the main event. Somewhere, to his relief, where other people are not. His relief, however is short lived.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she hisses.

“What? nothing – drinking – congrat’lations!” he beams at her emptily.

“I can _see_ that,” she has dropped the smile, and it suddenly seems to him she is all teeth, teeth she keeps together when she talks, lips thin and eyes stony.

“I will _not_ have you make a scene at my wedding,” she goes on, remorseless, he cannot imagine why she is hitting him with her words so hard – “This is hard enough without my having to babysit you. Do you even know how this looks?”

He has no idea what her last question pertains to, knows only that her tone and choice of words are making him angry.

“ _Looks –”_ he sneers – “How things look. That’s all you ever care about isn’t it? Being proper, being pretty, looking good. Well you’re not and you don’t and I hate it, so there.”

“You’re drunk.”

“Yes I am, I am _so_ drunk. How do you think I can get through the happiest day of your life otherwise, eh?”

She slaps him.

“You know damn well I – this is not –” she makes an inarticulate sound of irritation and anger – “How dare you – you – you think you’re the only one for whom things are ever difficult. You never even _try,_ do you _?_ Did you ever for once in your life think to imagine how anyone else is feeling?”

“No.”

“It was a rhetorical fucking question!” She snaps – “And I _know_ you don’t. You’re a selfish stupid boy and I don’t know why I –”

She stops, hands on her hips, looks up at the ceiling, he can see her scrunching her face up, all the veins tense in her neck. He knows she is trying not to cry and does not care.

“You don’t know why you love me? That what you were going to say? Then you knew you can’t because you don’t. Do you. You wouldn’t be doing this if you did. For all I know you love Pierre –”

“ _Fuck_ you –” she looks like she would like to slap him again, he watches her with the wary close eye of the drunk, but ready to move fast – “I feel _nothing_ for Pierre, and I’ll continue to feel nothing even when I _fuck_ the idiot.”

He is not sure he has heard her say the word _fuck_ so many times in one minute; if he could stand to even think about what she has just said it might have amused him. He opens his mouth –

“No!” she jumps in – “No, you don’t want to think about that! You think I do? You think I want this - I don’t –”

“You don’t love me!” he is shouting now, glad that she is mortified by how loud his voice is growing – “You just lie to me like to everyone else. Well I don’t love you either. I hate you!”

“I hate you! I hated you since you were born! Get out! Go on - go – you ruin everything!”

“I will! I didn’t want to be here anyway!” he stares at her, breathing heavily, wanting to shout more, wanting to heap invective after invective on her head, wanting to tear through the main room destroying everything. What self-preservation he can find reels him in hard enough that instead he just stops, swallow hard, spits out a final blow, filled with bile –

“Enjoy your wedding night,” and he turns sharply and walks out without looking at her.

He hears her call his name just once but he keeps on walking, out of the building, away from it all, out into the street without stopping to pick up his coat. He walks fast, all but running, fuelled on enough anger and alcohol to take him more than half way down the street before he realises how cold it is, the middle of winter and the snow falling. He can see his breath on the air, laced with light flecks of snowfall. He is still so angry, he half expects the steam to come out of him red and black, fuming in the cold night air. The cold is disgustingly sobering. It occurs to him, with what seems like logic, that there is simply no room for them both to be in the same city as long as it is her wedding night. He cannot keep thinking about Pierre touching her but he cannot stop thinking about it. He heads for home and cannot stay there either, quiet and peace do not suit him and there are too many of her things there trying to tell him that nothing has changed. He cannot do this, he was not born for suffering, so much turbulence in the soul – he wants only to be held and comforted until the bad feelings go away. There is only one person who can help him just now and he is in Moscow. So he sends word to Balaga and leaves that night for Moscow.

__x__

**I don't think there's anything in book canon to say if Anatole was in a mood or even present at Helene’s wedding but both 2007 and 2016 versions have him there looking salty as all hell so I’m going with that!**

**(also yeah this took me forever, work is mega busy at the moment. )**


	23. Dolokhov January 1806

 

 

**Dolokhov January 1806**

“Darling,” she smiles radiantly, as soon as they have a chance to be alone together, kissing him on the cheek. “It’s so good to see you again. I missed you –” he closes his eyes, sighs heavily, knowing exactly what is coming next, knowing she cannot even take a breath between apparently missing him before she has to ask – “How’s Anatole?”

 _How’s Anatole._ Dolokhov looks at the ground. It is too hard to meet Helene’s glassy smile, the forced brightness in her eyes. Something has changed in her since the wedding; he cannot quite articulate it, just knows that it is heart breaking to see. She is, if anything, brighter and more polished than before, but perhaps it is exactly that which lets him know how hard something is hurting her inside.

“I haven’t seen him since the wedding,” she adds. She says it casually, conversationally, but then she stops being able to meet his gaze and looks down at the ground herself.

Where would he start if he were to tell her the truth? Would he tell her that he knows what happened at the wedding and that she has every right to feel bad. She would deny that she felt bad anyway. How far back would she like to hear and how much detail could she bear?

He thinks about that evening in Moscow just over a month ago now, a week before Christmas and only days after the wedding. He was at home with his family, having gone straight to them on being given leave from the army. It was a good time, being with them and himself recently honoured after Austerlitz. For once he could feel almost easy among them, even his mother’s pride in him was starting to reach excruciating levels and his sister, in response to her own pride in him was responding only by giving him as much tender grief about everything she could think of as possible. They were sat in the front room laughing and talking. Mostly he talked and they listened, the firelight threw a glow in Galina’s hair that made him think, not for the first time, how beautiful she was, and his mother too, in the warm light, smiled like a sunbeam and his heart smiled with the same light. It was a good moment and he was happy.

And then a knock on the door, frantic and loud, making them jump. He frowned, got up slowly, wondering who it could be, peering out into the dark and the cold suspiciously. It was Anatole. He looked as though he had washed up onto their doorstep like a stray dog, bundled in furs, face pale and eyes dark, looking as though he not slept in days and had spent all of those days at the mercy of the elements. He looked like he had been crying on and off for a long time, the cold air etching silvery streaks down his face. Dolokhov frowned. He was not used to being so surprised. He had given Anatole this address a long time ago, yes, but had not for one moment imagined he would ever show up here.

It was cold, he bundled Anatole through the door first and then posed the question –

“What the devil are you doing here?”

“I –” Anatole’s eyes were a little wild, darting everywhere, large and lost. For a moment Dolokhov almost though he was going to begin by saying sorry – “I didn’t have anywhere else to go”.

Dolokhov opened his mouth to begin suggesting the number of places Anatole could have had to go, but trying to put himself into the other man’s head for a moment, realised that if this was the conclusion Anatole had come to it was the only truth to which he would listen. He sighed.

“Well come through to the fire, let’s get you warm”.

He wished he had either had more preparation for this or never had to deal with it at all. The idea of ever introducing either Anatole or his sister to his family was a nightmare that had more than once kept him up at night. To his surprise, the fears turned out to be utterly unfounded. He introduced him to his mother and sister awkwardly but between the three of them was an utter lack of the responding awkwardness he had expected. His mother kissed Anatole on the cheek and to Dolokhov’s horror he could not help but think that she was eyeing him a little too approvingly. Anatole, either out of the stress of the last few days or a social tact Dolokhov had not known he had, was humble and sweet to his mother, apologising for his sudden appearance and thanking her for the hospitality. She laughed at this, saying she was not sure she had shown him any yet, and headed out to the kitchen to make tea, pulling her son along with him.

“I’m sorry,” he said to her quietly when they were alone.

“Why are you sorry? If your friend needs somewhere to be he’s welcome. You never told me he was so –”

She grinned, a surprisingly wicked glint in her eye. Dolokhov closed his eyes.

“Mother, no!”

“I hope he doesn’t mind sleeping on the floor. I’ll pile the spare blankets in your room, shall I?”

“Thank you,” he was starting to wish the floor would just eat him – “The – er – floor will be fine.”

He was not sure if it made things better or worse that when they got back into the front room Anatole and Galina were talking smilingly as though they had been friends for years. Anatole was making her laugh and Galina had a blush in her cheeks Dolokhov had never seen before. He drank down tea like he usually drank down wine. He could not believe how easily they got through the evening, Anatole falling quickly back into smiles on their account and the rest of them infected by his good humour in turn.

“Fedya, he’s _lovely,”_ his sister whispered to him in the brief moment she got before they all headed upstairs – “If he wasn’t yours, I’d –” she blushed hard and put a hand to her mouth. Dolokhov groaned softly, amused. When he got up to his room Anatole was taking all the soft things from the floor and adding them to the bed.

“It’s not a double,” Dolokhov warned, closing the door behind him.

“We’ll manage. Didn’t we always back in the regiment?”

“If you call you hogging all the covers managing.”

“But I was clinging to a corner of the bed to avoid you hogging all of the mattress while I was doing it. Your family are so lovely. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Maybe I was afraid you’d try and run off with my sister.”

“Oh. I don’t think she’d mind.” Dolokhov shakes his head –

“Yes, well done, I think they’re both half in love with you. I should have guessed.”

“It must run in the family. Loving me.”

Dolokhov shook his head, smiling, remarkably happy with having Anatole here now that he had adjusted to the idea. Anatole took that smile as an offering of open arms and flung himself against him. Dolokhov in return found himself holding him crushingly tight.

“Alright,”  he breathed, when he felt like the boy had had enough crushing – “What happened?” Anatole, nuzzling himself under Dolokhov’s chin like a kitten, had evidently _not_ had enough hugs.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he mumbled.

“Yes you do,” Anatole always wanted to talk about whatever feelings he was having, even when he said otherwise.

“Well,” Anatole pouted – “Let’s lie down and I can tell you comfortably.” Dolokhov sighed for the hundredth time this evening, very aware that he was going to be used as a pillow. He was. Anatole took almost twenty minutes arranging himself, the bed and Dolokhov until he was perfectly comfortable, the both of them half-dressed and, as Dolokhov had suspected, Anatole’s head resting on his chest as though he was a pillow.

“Are you there yet? Come on. What brings you here.”

“Balaga,” Anatole answered facetiously – “Balaga brought me here, we travelled almost four days hardly stopping. I wanted to see you. I –” he bit his lip. Dolokhov stroked his arm, kissed the top of his head – “I didn’t want to be alone.”

“After the wedding?” he said it gently, having guessed this bit.

“I –” he felt Anatole’s whole body heave with a sigh – “I may have behaved badly. She’s mad with me. She just wants to be with _Pierre.”_ He pouted, Dolokhov could feel it.

“And she told you that did she?”

“No – not as –”

“And I suppose _you_ told _her_ that.”

“She slapped me.”

Dolokhov restrained himself from saying that he was not surprised.

“You knew this day had to come.”

Anatole shook his head, started to cry. Dolokhov patted him the shoulder. He had expected this, had been waiting for it almost.

He thinks about it now, half looking at Helene, wondering how to answer her question. He cannot. He cannot say _Anatole’s a mess, you should have seen him cry on me._ It reminds him of the first years they spent together, the months after that first meeting where they had fought over a bed they then learned to share, curled up tight together with him thinking this could be perfect, this could be happiness if it were not for Anatole always having her to cry over. He wants to hate her now like he had wanted to hate her then. He cannot hate her, any more than he could hate his family.

“I didn’t,” Anatole had said when he stopped crying enough to speak, blowing his nose on an edge of a blanket, Dolokhov groaning at him –

“You know we have to sleep in that.” Anatole, chuckling like a naughty child, cheering up just a little.

“I didn’t know. I never knew, not really. _She_ did. But I always thought – I always just thought there would be a way we could –”

“Marry?”

“I _know._ I know how stupid it is. But everything else has always been the way I want it and I want this – wanted it -” he makes the amendment bitterly – “So much I thought it had to come right. Like everything else. But now she’s married and it’s not to me. And I can’t hope that anymore and I don’t _like_ it. I don’t like it at all. She’s _mine,_ she –”

His forehead crumpled and he looked confused. Dolokhov kissed the frown lines away and Anatole smiled as though he was used to having someone do that for him.

“She _is_ yours. You know that really. She could never be anyone else’s. Except sometimes mine,” he had to add. Anatole grinned.

“That’s alright. That’s different. I just – I wish it could just be the three of us, forever. Even if there were no other people in the world and it was _just_ us. I’d like that. I don’t see the need for all these – other people.”

“Articulate as always, dearest.” Anatole smiled up at him and kissed him on the lips, playful at first, right up until it wasn’t.

Later, much later in the end, on the verge of sleep, Anatole mumbled a comfortable -

“I love you Fedya,” into the pillow and said nothing more about Helene. Dolokhov wished it did not have to have taken Anatole being so sad to give him something this precious.

He cannot tell Helene any of this. Cannot tell her how something in Anatole died with her marriage, something that can never be resurrected, cannot tell her how much he loves the boy and how much comfort this love has brought Anatole in these last few weeks. He cannot tell her what he found when they got back to Anatole’s house two days ago. How Anatole had come home that night drunk from the wedding and viciously, angrily and upsettingly methodically torn everything he could get his hands on to shreds. The place had looked as though an explosion had rocked through it, furniture and glass smashed everywhere, doors hanging broken and curtains dragged down. He cannot tell her that any more than he can tell her he understands her hurt as well, that he is here now as much because Anatole liked the idea of him being close to her as because Pierre made the offer in the first place.

He looks at her finally, over a scattered confusion of memory and indecision and simply replies –

“He’s fine.”

__x__

 

 


	24. Helene, 1807

**Helene, 1807.**

 “It’s done then,” Dolokhov announces, matter of factly. “The duel is on”.

“You did it?” she smiles, wide eyed, not really disbelieving, more delighted.

“ _He_ did it. I merely – provoked.”

“Well, you’re very provocative. What did you do?”

He has her laughing when he tells her about it, in the highest amusement she has felt since getting married. She thought she would be able to ignore her married status more than this, thought she could detach herself from it. She has been surprised, even disappointed in herself, at not being able to slough it all off as easily as she thought. The change of name is bad enough; she had rather liked being Princess Hélène Kuragina. _Countess Bezukhova_ sounds old somehow, positively frumpy. And then when she was Kuragin, her mind could play games with itself, imagining that she and Anatole were married after all – one of her few imaginings that she never shared with him. The difference is a constant reminder to her that the world will now see her first and foremost as _Pierre’s wife,_ not, as she was proud to think of herself – _Anatole’s sister._

It was the sex that got to her, though she hates to admit it or even think about it, and even though she has been successfully avoiding all such obligations ever since those early weeks. _Avoiding obligations –_ it amuses her bitterly the games a woman has to play, the censure she has to brave to delicately avoid this dreary state of sanctioned and expected rape. She supposes it is shocking of her even to view it in such terms. This is after all, something she has known she was going to have to put up with since she first encountered the idea of marriage.

Ultimately it is all more boring than it is traumatic. Pierre is useless, obviously, and adds insult to injury by believing her to be the more enthusiastic party. Well, perhaps that is not so much insulting after all, as it is a testimony to her skills at deception. She can even enjoy how good she must be at feigning interest, even delight, though she has tired of the game now and it has taken only weeks for them to settle into a routine of marital disharmony, only improved by the success of her suggestions that her husband spend more and more time dealing with his estates, _out of town._

And then, moving Dolokhov in was a further excellent remedy against boredom and, if she is perfectly honest, a rather boring kind of despair. Even though it was Anatole’s idea in the first place, she could not have thought of a better one herself. She suspects that between the two of them they are using him a bit unfairly, as a buffer zone for their own thorniness and individual difficulties. She can sense an irritation in him that needs to come to a greater head than simply duelling with Pierre.

That said, the duel is a delightful proposition.

“Will you kill him?” she asks, not quite ready to admit that she would welcome the idea but unable not to bring it up all the same. Dolokhov looks at her narrow eyed, not liking her entirely for it –

“Perhaps,” he says.

“Perhaps it would be the answer to everything,” she muses aloud. Dolokhov just grunts non – comitally in reply. She finds it hard to explain to him fully the extent of her distaste for Pierre, Anatole is better for this – he welcomes it as proof if it were needed that she takes no joy in this marriage. That he needs proof and that he would rather she were _not_ happy in this annoys her, but all the same, she cannot help but despise the man, shutting everything she is off from him all the more because she has had to share too much. She resents him for it and does not expect there is any cure for this.

It is a marvel to Hélène, almost more than to the rest of society that she has come, in these months to learn to play the social game more splendidly than ever. She sails through her engagements and gatherings, through balls and soirees like a swan at absolute ease upon a turbulent social sea. They are starting to call her _The Queen of Society._ It makes her laugh with no small amount of ridicule as well as victory. They will never know that her success is powered by disillusionment, her smiles by a quiet kind of sarcasm. There is a twinkle in her eye that all men are blinded by and all women wonder how to emulate. But it is not possible to copy something born of such secrets. It is love that keeps her shining, love that powers her sparkle; even in the face of all her current provocations, she is secure in the knowledge that her boys will love her forever and that even if the rest of the world follows suit it means nothing. They are all just the backdrop to a play with only three characters. She smiles at the words the back drop speaks as though watching the show behind her. The truth is that Dolokhov lives in her smile and Anatole is the glimmer in her eye, they will always be there, all else is nonsense.

She is torn between annoyance with this duel on account of her reputation and a secret wicked pleasure that it could mean the end of her husband. She thinks about playing the role of wealthy grief stricken widow and cannot help but tingle in enjoyment at the anticipation of taking it on. She feels like an actor sizing up her next part, eager for it. _Devoted wife_ is not going well for her.

The morning of the duel, Anatole slips in unannounced and without declaring himself, making his way through the quiet house to where she is still in bed. He slips in beside her like a pleasant dream and just for one sweet moment she forgets she is an adult and wakes up chattering to him in the language of their childhood, old routines and silly words that are conversation to them but garbled nonsense to anyone else.

“Did nobody see you come in?” she asks, finally, when they have flown over every field of their rather untended imaginary landscape. She wonders if people would be more shocked to know this was all they were doing in bed that morning than what people might normally expect.

“No, I lurked. I waited until I saw Pierre go out.”

“Creep.”

“But it’s you I’m creeping over.”

This time he does kiss her, she enjoys it for a moment before putting a hand to his face, like a kitten pushing away a toy it does not like.

“Stop it,” she laughs – “We shouldn’t. Not at a time like this.”

“It’s never a good time. Not nowadays.”

“Do you think Dolokhov will be alright?”

Anatole shrugs flamboyantly. She sighs; he has clearly not even considered the question.

“Of _course_ he will. He does this all the time. You’re not _worried_ are you?”

“No,” she lies “ No, of course not.” She strokes his nose with the tip of her nose.

“What a terrible liar you are, sister.”

She snorts.

“I’m a wonderful liar. You’re just too dim to be taken in by it.”

Anatole scrunches his face up trying to find a way in which this might make sense, trying to work out if she meant to make sense or not. She laughs, watching his face. She feels better, suddenly, lighter, more herself. It is a good feeling; she clamps down on it, sighing and sitting up. He tugs at her arm.

“Stay.” She laughs. It feels good.

“I can’t. I need to be awake to find out how it went.”

“You _are_ awake,”

“And you’re a pest. Get up.”

It should, she reflects, have been a more serious morning, but in the end it is nearly afternoon by the time they leave the bedroom and mid-afternoon by the time the servants – whom she has given strict orders to tell her as soon as anything is known – come to her with the news that Pierre is alive and Dolokhov is injured.

“I’m going to kill him,” she says, as soon as they have the room back to themselves and to her amusement Anatole has said it in unison with her.

“We can’t both kill him,” she smiles ruefully – “Besides, how would it look if you killed my husband?”

“I didn’t mean him,” Anatole scowls – “I’m going to kill Fedya. What did have to lose for? he never loses duels. And why is he staying with _Nikolai?_ ” he sneers the last part – “I’d have – I mean he could – Nikolai can’t have him!” he finishes, pouting. Hélène rolls her eyes –

“Oh for god’s sake! Is that all you can think of? Go away, I have an idiot to deal with.”

In the end she regrets kicking Anatole out, pacing the room for most of the afternoon without hearing anything out of Pierre. She feels herself bristling with tension, making every second seem like a spiny forever, her fists balling angrily, wishing she could hit something, knowing that she will not. It is not until the next morning, after only half sleeping that she finds Pierre asleep on the ottoman and cannot keep the words from coming and even then it is a restrained version of everything she would like to say, the rest lying fractiously beneath her tongue.

When everything comes crashing around her – literally she supposes, not just figuratively, she all but runs from the room, dresses quickly and furiously and goes to the only safe place she can think of. Anatole has to be that place, he always has been. She is furious to find herself trembling in the carriage on the way there, furious that she should feel this confusing, headachy kind of fear. She had though she was so old, so used to everything, so jaded. She had believed herself above hurt or threats. But she never had been threatened before, had she? She chides herself for being so stupid. Not to have allowed it to happen, but for not imagining that it _would_ happen. She knows that Pierre is useless and utterly incapable of carrying out on a genuine threat but with the words _I’ll kill you_ still fresh in her ears she cannot quite hear the sound of her own more rational voice.

She pauses on the doorstep, taking a deep breath before entering, pressing her lips tightly together and feeling her own face ache with the effort of smiling. In the end it is all for nothing because the first thing Anatole says when he sees her in his front room is –

“What is it? What’s the matter?”

She sees his face go so quickly from surprise at her being there to concern that there is obviously something the matter that she drops the whole pretence in an instant. It is such a _relief_ that she starts to cry, all the air going out of her with her mask ripped off. And Anatole, Anatole is _there_ and holding her and it feels pleasant, reassuring, but she hates herself for crying and for being so _small._ She feels small and does not like it. It has never been this way round; she can almost feel Anatole growing as she shrinks, not without a certain amount of pride at being able to help her. She does not want to helped, does not want to be looked after, if he was to _pity_ her she would never forgive him. She wants to be looked after _so much_ suddenly and resents herself bitterly for it. She stops crying after only a short while, sniffs briskly and tells him everything simply and factually, from a point of distance far away from her own words. By the time she has finished his face is almost white and he is positively silent with anger. She steps back to give him room for it.

“I’m going to kill him,” he says between clenched teeth.

“Oh don’t be stupid, no you’re not,” she feels a bit better for saying it, more like herself.

“He hurt you.”

“No. No not really. Not at all. I’m fine.”

“He _threw a table at you!”_

“He missed.”

“That’s not the –” Anatole clutches at her and to her relief it is more like the usual way of things – he is the child needing her, holding her too tight –

“If he hadn’t –” his lower lip trembles in the endearing manner of a small boy. Most little boys lose that sweet tremble when they grow up, he never has. He buries his face in her hair, holds her tighter –

“I’m going to kill him,” he says again.

“He didn’t mean it. If he wanted to kill me –” she stops, realising this is perhaps not the best or most comforting thing to say at this moment. Anatole’s lip curls, she can feel an actual growl in his throat; it is almost ridiculously attractive. He reaches for a sword he is not wearing.

“Oh what are you going to do?” she laughs, snorting without any real mirth – “duel him? Haven’t we had enough of that? If it wasn’t for you boys and your duels none of this would have happened.”

“Nobody hurts you,” Anatole persists stubbornly – “nobody. Or Fedya,” he adds.

“Well it’s alright. He’s leaving me, remember, reputation aside it’s all for the best anyway.”

“Good.” Anatole nods – “I’m glad. You’re mine, not his, you’ll always be mine, both of you and if I could –”

“Hush,” she kisses him lightly wondering why, when she is the injured party here, she is now the one comforting him. What is _wrong_ with men? She smiles to herself – “You can’t. That’s all. It will all be alright,” but really, she supposes this is better, comforting him comforts her better than having him comfort her. This has always been the way. Familiarity is comforting and there is nothing, she thinks now, better than having someone know her as well as he does and yet still manage to be so obtusely difficult.

“So what are you going to do now?” he asks. She nods, she has been trying to think. She cannot as well as she would like to, she still feels stupidly shaken, unable to think past today and so it is only in respect of that near future that she answers –

“I’m going to stay here”. She nods and then, hating herself, almost cringing at her own horrible vulnerability she adds –“Can I?”

He smiles in reply an affirmative he does not need to utter, completely and utterly forgetting that just before she arrived he had been planning to go and see Dolokhov.

__x__

**I’m kinda unhappy with this chapter but I don’t really know why? like, I think, in trying to avoid the bits that are canon it may have come out a bit choppy? That and I have trouble with this whole section of events – I lived for ten years with someone who threw stuff at/ threatened to kill me on a regular basis so it’s hard to cover this dispassionately so I maybe went ooc on Helene a bit? I dunno. Suggestions welcomed! :-)**


	25. Dolokhov, 1807

 

**Dolokhov, 1807.**

 

By the time Anatole remembers and deigns to come and see him, Dolokhov is past the point of hoping he would remember and has moved through annoyance and disappointment and into the far more dangerous ground of _never expected him anyway._ He had known Hélène would not, that she would prioritise reputation over any consideration for him- if she had any to begin with. But Anatole actually manages to surprise him by his lack of consideration, even when he knows that such utter carelessness is one of the boy’s defining characteristics.

Strictly speaking he does not even come and see him, but sends a rather brief note for him almost a week after the duel has taken place. He reads it angrily and therefore repeatedly, annoying himself more and more each time at the brevity and carelessness of the note. He considers not answering, _definitely_ considers not going. In the end it is Nikolai who tells him that he should, if only so that he will stop sitting around glaring and debating with himself about it. He sets off with a horrible foreknowledge that it is not going to go well.

Hélène is not there when he arrives. He is vaguely, almost casually pleased about this, and at the same time not surprised. He has not wanted to see her less since before he met her. It is almost ironic that the rumour about the two of them should have started up at a time when things were going so badly between them. The rumours had been true of course but just because they were fucking did not mean they had been getting on. Hélène had been getting to him the same way Anatole usually got to him; constantly going on about her brother to him, knowing that he was seeing more of him than she was, trying to use him as a blanket or a bridge in the problems between the two of them. He _did_ care; he did not like these problems. At the same time they were _theirs_ and he was starting to feel a little more than fractious at being used as the go – between.

When she wasn’t complaining about Anatole she was complaining about Pierre. He did not think he would have minded either of these things if she had just come out and said everything she meant in a straight forward manner. But she didn’t. She would just constantly drop leads for him to pick up and he then belligerently would fail to take the bait and she would never just vent without what she had seen as a silent approval and so it had all just fumed away beneath the surface expelling itself in irritated gusts of breath or irritable, non – consequential comments that he began more and more to ignore. The duel had just been the final straw – she had gone on and on at him to provoke Pierre; he very much suspected that she had written the note herself that had told Pierre of the affair. To make this worse, he knew that she in turn suspected him of the same thing and was stubbornly not asking him about it just as he was stubbornly not talking to her.

Altogether she had put him in a frame of mind where he could see nothing good out of talking to Anatole just at this time. He realised that the part of him that led his feet to Anatole’s house that evening was the part of him that never walked away from a fight, who met it bullishly, head on even if it was far from the right thing to do. He did not even knock, just walked in.

Anatole was in  an irritatingly good mood, throwing his arms around his friend quite typically, not noticing that Dolokhov was reticent in accepting the hug or remembering that he was still injured until he stepped away briskly, wincing slightly.

“Oh yes, sorry, I forgot.”

“Of course you did” Dolokhov sighed, slouching past him into a chair – “How’s Hélène?”

“Oh yes, of course you haven’t heard? No why would you – you know she and Pierre have separated, isn’t it wonderful?” Anatole’s face goes from being cloudy to joyous in the space of seconds – “Did you hear what he did?”

Actually Dolokhov has heard, of course he has, it would have been impossible for anyone not living under a rock in the country not to have heard about Count Bezuchov’s split with his wife. It annoys him that Anatole could imagine that he – as in fact the rumoured cause of the break up would not have heard about it – neither does it surprise him.

“No” he drawls wearily. “What happened?”

Anatole tells him at length and with absolute animation in every reaction from delight at the beak up to wanting to kill Pierre for threatening his sister, never once noticing the utter impassivity hiding the growing irritation with which Dolokhov listens to him.

He is thinking, as Anatole speaks, about Nikolai and his family. How they have welcomed him in the last two weeks, whilst his lovers have ignored him. How they did not even know him but have accepted him in their house to the point where he no longer even has to announce himself. He thinks about a family life like that, how different it is from anything he has encountered, the foolish amiable count and his typically nagging wife, Nikolai himself, who seems to live in a state of ignorance Dolokhov finds himself in the mood to find charming.

There is something so charmingly, wilfully dim and pleasant and drably cheerful about day to day life at the Rostov’s, whether it be teaching card tricks to young Petya who already looks up to him as though he is a hero, or the way Nikolai’s admiration shines through his every word, only just a little more hidden than his brother’s. Even Natasha’s barely concealed bristling dislike and suspicion amuses him, and then there is Sonya.

Sonya shines more brightly than the rest of her family put together. He wonders that it is not obvious to all of them but instead only sees how they ignore her and take her for granted. There is something of his sister in her, he thinks, that quiet pensive intelligence, that sweet acceptance that expects and asks for nothing. It makes him almost sad. He wishes he could just tell her _I see you_ because he cannot help but do so, every time he walks into a room of boisterous overbearing Rostovs, it is the quiet gentle girl in corner his eye always turns to. He could imagine taking this girl home to meet his mother and sister. He could imagine it going well, easily. It is not uncomfortable like it is to imagine Hélène around them. He feels a stab to the heart at a certain perceived treachery at this thought, followed quickly by chastising himself for ever thinking he should be loyal to Hélène. It occurs to him that Anatole has stopped talking.

“I see,” he says flatly – “So that’s why you never came to see me.”

Anatole blinks at him, as though surprised at his tone.

“Yes, I’m sorry about that.”

“You’re not though, are you? You maybe had a moment of thinking you should see if I was surviving and then you dropped it all because she turned up at the door.”

“Of course I did, she was upset – I really don’t see –”

“You never do - do you?” he explodes, but it a rather weary explosion – “You – both of you – you just fall through life not caring who you touch or who you hurt. You don’t _see_ anything, either of you.”

“Honestly Fedya, you’re being ridiculous.”

“No Anatole – ridiculous is you, I at least sometimes think twice before I act. _”_

“This is to do with Nikolai, isn’t it?” Anatole says suddenly. “Because he was there at the time and he helped you out, now you like him better than me because he makes those eyes at you like a faithful dog.”

“Don’t you –this is nothing to do with Nikolai. I’m just sick of it. I won’t keep being the go between for you and your sister, I’m not here to be your errand boy or fight your sister’s duels. I could have –”

He stops. He will not lower himself to this. He could have died; he has been thinking about it ever since the duel. He cannot deny to himself that losing has thrown him, frightened him even, and to lose to such a man as Pierre is a shame he does not like to admit to. Even if he will just about bring himself around to the thought of it he is a great distance off saying it out loud, even to Anatole. Just now _especially_ to Anatole.

“You think I wouldn’t have cared,” Anatole looks at him with sudden unusual insight, wide eyed, pouting.

“ _Would_ you? You’re careless, spoiled, selfish things, staring at yourselves in mirrors and only ever seeing each other. Why _should_ you have eyes or time for the rest of the world.”

“What’s the world got to do with anything?”

Dolokhov looks at him silently for a long moment, chest tight, hurting. Finally he closes his eyes; it is too hard to do this in front of that trembling little boy lip.

“I’m in it,” he says finally, rising and sighing deeply, walking past Anatole without looking at him –

“I’m sorry,” he adds frowning at the door, leaving Anatole alone, he knows, wondering why and how this has happened and even what has happened.

Three days later he asks Sonya to marry him. He surprises himself with it but also finds himself under a whole new set of dreams and potential prospects of the future. He imagines a quiet life, a normal one, wife and children, being able to give this girl a life she deserves, helping her to a sense of her own worth and saving something of himself in the process. The more he has seen her do, the casual neglect and dismissal he sees her constantly take from the rest of them has all combined to make him ready to think he could devote everything into giving her something better. Aside from a lingering deep bitterness that he pushes down, he feels good about it when he asks and is utterly shocked when the turns him down.

“Forgive me,” she says, looking down at her hands and pressing her lips together – “I must thank you for the sentiments but I cannot – I just –” she grows flustered and he presses her hand gently, not wishing to scare her but she still takes a step away.

“Is there anything I can say that might make you change your mind?”

“Forgive me –” she says again, she spends her life in apology, he thinks, he wishes it could be easy to change that. “Forgive me for it, but it is not my mind that is at question.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“It is yours,” she says, surprising him again – “You don’t really love me.”

“I promise you –”

“ _Please,”_ she insists. There is an unexpected strength in her; it surprises him less, he supposes, than it would her family. “Please don’t say anything either of you will regret.”

“Either of – who? I don’t understand.”

“I do not mean to invade or to assume –” she says thoughtfully. “But there’s someone else, isn’t there?”

It reminds him so strongly of the time his sister had guessed about Anatole, right at the beginning, that he cannot deny it.

“I do not mean to imply that you are trying to deceive me,” she says quickly. “You think you love me, I am sure, but you love them more even if just now you think otherwise–” he avoids her eyes, the depth of her perception _(them)._

“Please,” she says again, eyes large and frightened, perhaps at her own daring – “I do not mean to hurt you, but I think we would both regret it if you were to marry me simply because you have been injured on someone else’s account.”

He smiles humourlessly. She is right of course; he had not had any idea his heart could be so visible to anyone. It is a bitter irony, he thinks that she could see him as well as he does her, but what she sees is a truth that the life he had begun to envision cannot belong to him. He does not feel better for knowing it, but yes, he loves Anatole. He will always love Anatole. Helene too, damn it, and he was being a coward in seeking this sweet simplicity.

“You’re right,” he says heavily, after the battle has been lost, pauses. “There is someone else for you too, I think.”

“Yes,” she murmurs, unflinching in her honesty, “but that’s irrelevant, isn’t it?”

He shakes his head in denial of this.

“Yes,” she insists, adding with a sadness that should be self-pitying but is somehow merely factual – “It’s always been irrelevant.”

Dolokhov breathes a tight little breath, kisses the hand he is still holding in his and breaks away.

“He doesn’t deserve you,” he states, nods to her and leaves.

Whoever it was, Dolokhov thinks, he would not deserve her. But he knows who it is and he determines that his last act before he returns to his real people will be to ruin the idiot.

__x__

 

**So my beta is sad about this chapter cause our babies had a break up and they really hate Dolokhov/ Sonya…so if anyone out there feels the same rest assured they will all be back together pretty soon (i.e. next chapter)….except for poor Sonya of course who still just ends up sad and alone. :-(**

**And I’m just hoping I wrote Sonya ok cause I love. her. I – uh – don’t love the Rostovs, I fear I maybe made that a bit too clear! :-)**


	26. Interlude 1807 – 1810

 

**Interlude 1807 – 1810**

He thinks about the way they move, push and pull back and forth; but he always comes back here in the end, somehow they always fall back together. He feels it more than ever after dreaming of another life – the distance and the mistiness of the dream and the reality of these two next to him, this life that he never imagined, asked for, or could imagine lasting. He thinks about the stars sparkling from Anatole’s eyes, the sun caught between Helene’s teeth, illuminating the corner of her smile. For better or worse they are his people, and he cannot imagine questioning it again. He thinks about the movement of bodies, of the geography and history of their lives, like tides pulling away and coming back but he always comes crashing back here with these two as his land.

She thinks about how beautiful they are, the three of them. Of her and Anatole barely separable in her mind, and Dolokhov as the background that sets them off, making them all the more beautiful for the element of contrast. Ebb and flow they come together, fall apart, it has stopped concerning her like it used to, now that she knows how this dance is meant to go. It is always easy once you learn the steps. They fight, they make up, they move away, they come back into place. It goes on.

He thinks about the sensations they bring; the softness of his sister’s skin, the warmth of her hair and the coolness of her thighs, Dolokhov’s smile and that smiling mouth against his skin. He thinks about being between the two of them, rough and smooth, he is made of them and they of him. He is unaware of the times they are apart and always delights when they are back together. He knows that nothing can keep them from happiness for long; that come as trials will, happiness is the fundamental state of existence, the point of it all. He does not have to words to express this to an outsider – someone like Pierre perhaps, always searching for a deeper meaning. There is no deeper meaning – he wishes, vaguely, that everyone, even Pierre, could understand this and be happy. He understands it and life is good. It is that simple, he thinks, it really is.

Anatole never noticed he had gone, never even knew they had split up. Dolokhov can barely believe it at first, but when he comes to realise it he is not even surprised. He wonders about telling him, wonders if he would be pleased to hear – that having considered another way he discarded it and came back knowing that they were, all three of them, stronger than he had ever imagined. In the end he does not tell; he realises, that without any malice at all Anatole simply would not care. _Are we good?_ he asks when they meet again, his eyes so big and innocent that Dolokhov thinks of all the complex thoughts and ideas he had about relationships, his relationships and what they signify, what future he can imagine – thinks about the weeks of contemplation, and smiles into those wide open wondering eyes – _yes dear boy, we’re good._

She realises what has happened and thinks about talking to one or both of them about it. But what is the point in trying to explain it to Anatole, who will not understand and who she cannot bear to see sad. She could say to him _do you realise he’s left us?_ and he would nod and smile, say _yes I know, he’s gone away for a while and when is he coming back?_ She can shake her head at him in affectionate despair because he is her happiness and her joy. When Dolokhov _does_ come back she tells herself _of course,_ convincing herself she never doubted that he would and surprised to find how tight her chest had become at the idea of him being gone for good. She realises, for the second time, how in love with him she is and wonders, for the thousandth time when this happened. She does not really talk to him either, but copying Anatole meets his eye warily and asks him _are we good?_ and he laughs and holds her tight and answers _yes my dear, we’re good._

They even laugh over the suspicions that sprang up between them - _Did you write that letter to Pierre? No, did you? No!_ They believe each other because it does not matter at this stage if they are lying or not. Love is innocent above all else, it does not have to care. We move, he thinks; we dance, we fight, we love, our footsteps weave a web we will always live in, we three, the only people in the world we have made ourselves, and that’s good, it’s right. He sighs to think of it – he did not necessarily want it to feel so right but it is, it’s only us that matter, it’s only ever the people we love that matter. That’s not wrong.

When he leaves Anatole sulks, but not for very long. If he had been prone to tears he might even have cried and again, not for very long. Emotions are a river to him, they never stop moving, flowing into each other. He supposes he is learning to accept change on the condition that his major bedrocks can stay the same.

She knows she is one of these rocks. She has always been his anchor and would not want to change this. But at the same time, she imagines Dolokhov’s adventures and sees herself in them as well. Her life, by necessity, can only contain so much movement and she dreams about the places Dolokhov writes to them about, the dust and the heat of which he speaks, incomparable, he says to any summer they have ever known here. She imagines herself as a bird in the blue sky of which he speaks, but in the end the landscape she looks down on is her own imaginary kingdom. She cannot, however hard she tries, really imagine a desert in a way that brings it to life.

He writes home; such different letters to his mother, his sister and his lovers. He makes the stories safer for the former and more dangerous for the latter. He does not lie, not as such, but he weaves it different colours dependant on the listener. The stories sound as they ought but are never quite what the eye sees or his head takes in. When he first sees the Shah’s palace on the edge of the sands he thinks of boiled sweets, the colourful kind that are Anatole’s favourite. He sees the domes and spires of the place shimmer in the sun and he thinks of a Petersburg ballroom plucked out and thrown into the desert. He thinks of Helene and how she shines. He blinks sweat out of his eyes and shifts his feet with the sand in his shoes and he knows there is no way he can _really_ describe any of this to anyone else.

Anatole feels. He feels before he thinks, speaks or acts, if sometimes only moments before. Since Helene’s marriage he has learned, he supposes, a little about restraint, enough to not ruin their lives irreparably- but not as much, as Helene always says, as he should have. It is easy for him to live, to love, to hurt. He laughs and cries by turns, as unashamed of his feelings as a child. It is easy to feel when unimpeded by having to think. Every taste, every touch, every new sensation is a joy to him. He lives in the downing of vodka, in a raucous shout, in the moment of orgasm. His life is a series of moments, his pain hard and fast and real and his joy savage by turns and long and golden and unwinding at others. A bright flash of colour like a jewel is pleasing, the taste of sweetness, the sound of her voice. He does not often stop to reflect on what he does not have or cannot have; he makes himself put these things away, tries not to even wish for them.

And sometimes he does wish, he wishes that Dolokhov were here, wishes he could kiss Helene _now_ and not wait until this evening. Now and then he dares wish the big things, that they were all somehow married and living together. He throws wishes up to the sky which swallows them; in the warm air he thinks of Dolokhov wherever he is, looking up too and feeling the same warmth, seeing that same blue. He thinks about his breath travelling through the air stream and always finding Fedya’s or Helene’s, all of their lives dancing somewhere together in the sky. He smiles to think of how close they are beneath this same sky, smiles to think how small the sky is.

It occurs to her too, how big they are, how little the world can hold them, how, however far apart they are it is not far at all. The sky is a plate, a dome, a ceiling, beyond which they can none of them fly and sometimes she feels more hemmed in by it than she ever could indoors. But these days, when so much keeps the three of them apart, she takes comfort in this, how close they must be. She watches the clouds, playing in her head the games they played as children and a part of her feels to the point of real knowledge that Anatole is playing the same game at the same time and seeing the same shapes he does. When he goes away with the army again she plays her games all the more. Down here on earth she plays with people, becomes infamous for her lovers, chewing them up and spitting them out, always searching for new methods of control over men. It was never necessary before she was married. Nobody knows how, for all her practicality, her head is in the clouds. She breathes only the same air as two people, smells and feels and sees them everywhere. Because of them she is flying high above the stage on which she plays the mortal aspect of her lie. Up here she smiles to think how close they are beneath this same sky, smiles to think how small the sky is.

His story is fast becoming mythological. He could begin to get delusions of grandeur that are hardly even delusions at all. He could fit himself into so many roles; traveller, wanderer, Romantic hero, assassin, story teller, trickster. _I should be my own religion_ he thinks with only the faintest twinge of guilt that this is going too far. But he thinks about the figure he makes, the shadow he casts and cannot help but be impressed. He cannot imagine returning home with anything other than a thundering superiority complex, trailing hand in hand the small whiny child of his own self-doubt. He thinks too much, he supposes. Sometimes he wonders if he has to, to make up for Anatole’s absence of deeper thought. He wonders if Helene does too, as though there were only so many characteristics to go round and they all have to complement each other, one person divided into three by the hand of some over enthusiastic god. Because they are always here with him. He is tethered to them, even to himself by the smooth stone in his pocket that Anatole gave him one day, by the ring Helene gave him that he wears on a chain around his neck. He feels the smoothness of that round stone whenever his hand goes into his pocket, so often sees the rainbows reflected from the diamond on its chain whenever the sun hits at a certain angle and can all but smell them beside him. He hears their voices in even the most exotic bird song, feels their skin in every man and woman he touches, sees their eyes sparkle in every reflected light. He squints into the sunlight, into the hard dazzle of the sky, smiling to think how close they all are beneath it, how small this sky really is.

And the sky looks down and does not care.

__x__


	27. Kassia, Winter 1810

 

**Kassia, Winter 1810**

“Oh father I am so happy!” the young girl cries, burying her face in her hands at the feel of it, shoulders shaking in her own delight. The father smiles tolerantly, used to his daughters’ sudden loves and hates, their triumphs and their great calamities.

“She’s in love” her sister says. Ela is younger, much younger it sometimes seems to Kassia, who at seventeen thoroughly considers herself an adult and her younger sister a child. Well perhaps it is that way, she is not sure she would know. She is not sure she can know anything for sure beneath the weight of such happiness as this. She knew she would fall in love as soon as the Russian militia came into town; they all looked so smart and handsome, the gold of their uniforms glinting in the icy sun. She had known, and she feels wise for knowing, but she had not known it would be so very like a fairy tale and she cannot stop laughing for the beauty of it. Normally she would at least glare at her sister for speaking so plainly such a lovely secret thing, but this time she is too proud and pleased with the story she has written herself into to hide it.

“I am” she says proudly “I love him and he loves me. He’s a prince and _he loves me._ ” She wants to laugh forever, today she could. What girl has not dreamed of being able to utter such words? And to think that they are actually _true._ She hugs herself for joy.

“She’s going to have his babies” her sister adds, teasing, doing what she always does, trying to get a rise – she meant to say _she wants to have his babies_ but she thinks that this twist on it will aggravate her sister more. Their father snorts and Kassia laughs again but even as she does so she finds herself growing warm in the cheeks – she supposes it must make her quite red faced – because it occurs to her that this really could be true. Her eyes widen and grow misty and her head leans to one side a little, face sobering as she thinks about the truth of this and how wonderful and magical it could be.

And then her father notices and everything starts to go wrong. She feels her world spin when his rough bark of laughter at their silliness stops and he is watching the change in her face with the horror of a man watching clouds cross the sky too quickly to get the livestock out of the rain and the grain into a place of safety.

“No” he says. He wishes it was an order, Kassia can tell, but it is not, just a terrified question that chills her and makes her wonder for the first time if she did something wrong. Even Ela’s face grows dark beneath this cloud as she realises that something has gone out of tune. She had only been joking – at least she thought she had.

“You’re not.” he turns this to her in that same tone of voice, the tone that is still a question but tells her clearly enough to answer it well if she values her life. She cannot lie, she has never been able to lie. It is hardly something she could cover up later if the lie was discovered.

“I don’t know” she says, looking down at the floor, the sunshine and the laughter gone – “Maybe” she digs her toe into the floorboard, staring at the grain in wood, a spot where the lines form an eye shape. Even that stares back at her accusingly. When she peeps up again her father is looking at her like he would quite like to slap her but no, she realises this is something that goes beyond that and he asks her very quietly what the blackguard’s name is. The first time she tries to reply no word will come out; she had struggled to pronounce such unfamiliar syllables anyway, when they do escape her lips it is in a whisper like wind beneath the panes, careful and flawed;

“ _Kuragin”._

-x-

The day before the wedding is the next day that she sees him. She is no longer sure quite what to think or feel. On the one hand her father, when he came back that night told her the man had agreed to marry her, on the other hand he has neither let her see him nor go out of the house since then, not one foot beyond the gate he said. She has gone about in a dream, dancing through the corridors, bothering her sister, just as she has always done, dreaming of the Russian army in their camp beyond the village and her prince who said he loved her at looked at her with such merriment and happiness in his eyes. He must have loved her to look at her so happily and truly he must anyway because he has agreed to marry her, a girl of such little wealth and status, at least compared to what he must be used to. She goes from moment to moment in raptures at the Romance of it and in despair that she cannot see him with dark shadowed moments in between in which she wonders why her father looks at her so oddly, why he does not let her out, why, if her beloved has agreed to this marriage, she is being vaguely treated like she has done something wrong.

Then on the evening before the wedding he comes and when he does the sun shines out of her face again through all the cloud. She sees him down the road with a man she saw with him before, another attractive tall Russian gentleman with a wicked twinkle in his eye that makes him almost as handsome as her prince.

“They’re here!” she cries, hopping from foot to foot at the window – “Father may I?”

Her father’s voice is weary, heavy with misgiving when he waves her out the door with a brush of the hand as though she were a cat. She barely hears it, running down the yard with an almost dancing step, knowing how beautiful she must seem in her happiness and simplicity just to see them. She sees the friend pat her prince on the shoulder in a gesture she does not understand, but in the end all she can feel is pleasure and gratitude that he walks off a little way to let them be together. She clasps the well gloved hands in her own bare small ones, impulsively, almost giggling, pleased beyond the telling of it that she, as his wife to be has a right to do this.

He does not behave as though she had a right to do it. She feels her forehead crumple instantly at the stiff and formal way he detaches himself from her with a chill that almost feels like distaste. But she refuses to trust her initial assumption and speaks as she had planned to, regardless.

“I am so happy!” she looks up into his face and he is smiling gently as he is always smiling, looking so perfectly unconcerned about everything the only assumption anyone could make is that everything is going to be alright.

“Are you?” she cannot quite gauge his tone of voice.

“Of course! I can hardly believe it! – that you love me and would want to marry me – it’s too wonderful!”

“Oh my dear” he says and her heart flutters like a butterfly and he gently touches her hair – “Of course I don’t love you.”

“What?” she blinks very rapidly, certain she has misheard but more certain, in her plummeting heart that she has not misheard – “But you said you’d marry me. You told my father –”

“Yes of course I did.” he nods, he hardly even looks at her – “Because he threatened to run me through if I did not.”

“But –” it is all wrong, her eggshell world is cracking in a dozen and more places – “You _said_ you loved me.”

“Well I did say that –” he nodded – “Before –”

Her eyes widen as she realises _before what_ and for the first time in her recently adult life – if it can even be called such – she finds herself growing furious – it pools in her as powerful as desire and twice as fast.

“Oh!” she cries, eyes brimming with anger, not sadness and she finds herself again struck stupid, speechless with it – “Oh you -!” she puts a hand to her mouth afraid of herself for even thinking of calling him all the things it occurs to her to call him. Even now she cannot do such a thing as would admit to herself that it really has all gone so badly.

“But –” she says slowly, her brain running faster than it ever has, seeking a next best ideal to fix upon – “You could _grow_ to love me – once we are married.”

“No” he shakes his head at her and she catches a glimpse of the sadness behind his smile that so few saw and she thinks that maybe, if he were not destroying her, feel sorry for him.

“No my dear I could not, you see – I love another – someone else – you see?” she finds herself backing away a little; she has heard stories like this before too; she basked in the tragedy, the sting of them. She never for a moment imagined these could be the stories she would inhabit. She turns her back on him not wanting to hear any more. He touches her shoulder, turning her back round, not entirely gently.

“She is everything” he says. She wonders why he has to, but understands that he does, as though he has never been able to say such things before and maybe is only saying them to her because she does not know who the girl in question is.

“ _Everything”_ he repeats and the sounds seem to come from far away – “She’s the laughter in the theatre when everyone else is crying. She’s the sob you’d never hear behind the breaking glass at dinner. She’s my destruction and my salvation, my _life._ And there was a moment, just for second when something in your smile reminded me of her and that made you good enough if just for one night. But my dear you’re _not_ her and you never could be. She’s so much lovelier than you it would make your head reel.”

“Why?” Kassia whispers, her face is so wet and she barely knows why or how, even when she started to cry and her _why_ does not even mean what she thought it would. She wants to ask _why would you do this? Why would you say this? Why would you think I was the person to give this to?_ But instead of anything so pathetic she shocks herself by spilling out an angry –

“Why would you not marry her then?”

His lip twitches. She watches him fight it with a small sense of satisfaction. He looks for a moment like he would quite like to strike her. That almost pleases her, savagely, too. It is as if he has been wearing a flawless plaster mask and now she can see an ugly dark crack like a wound across the surface. When he does speak it is thin lipped, bloodless, just two words spat out with snarling venom –

“I _can’t.”_

She wants to make it worse, she realises, cannot believe that he has given her something to stab him with, finds herself on the brink of asking, with cold curiosity another deadly _why._ He clearly sees it in her eyes, a question lined up like a cannon;

“Tomorrow” he says quickly – “I’ll see you in church tomorrow and I’ll be leaving with the regiment when we move on.”

 He turns his back on her abruptly, before she can object any further.

“Fedya!” she hears him call to his companion – “We’re leaving, come on.”

His companion saunters over, taking his time as though none of this is anything to him. He actually pats her shoulder sympathetically as he passes, winks at her, giving her a _cheer up_ smile and a little shrug. As their figures get smaller down the path leading back into the village she hears the faint laughter they must imagine does not reach her.

__x__

 

**So I wrote this bit almost before any of the other bits so if it doesn’t fit so well now I am sorry, I have wiggled it a bit to make it work better. I’m also really not sure if Dolokhov would be there, I suspect he probably wouldn’t but I can’t bring myself to ever write out a Dolohov so here he is. :-) Also cause I wrote it so long ago it might be unbeta'd but i honestly don't recall, if so I apologise for my spelling and grammar.**

**Ona  random note I was basing this chapter stylistically and structurally on the Sybil Vane chapter from “The picture of Dorian Gray” – randomly, and another reason it might not work in context. Essentially if I ever got this published as a book  I’d probably take it out but since that’s unlikely and all, it can stay!**


	28. Hélène, February 1811

**Bit of a cop out this chapter I'll admit - it's exactly the same as I wrote for part of"The Bet" but I'm way too lazy to re-write the Great Comet era events again and this works just as well here as it did in that one so yeah, feel free to skip if you've already read that one. :-)**

 

 

**Hélène, February 1811**

 

 She had never much believed in superstition; omens and portents, divination – it all seemed rather silly to her. She could not answer in her own mind if there was such a thing as fate, some mystical design or pattern in the world, and she was not entirely sure how anybody could. She wondered if it was all an advanced game of make believe, a group of children still crowded round a mirror, giggling and enjoying the feeling of awe in the face of a force beyond them. She was not sure there was a force beyond herself, and if there was it was hardly relevant to her life so it did not seem to be something she need waste much time with.

But then tonight she finds herself looking up at the sky and is struck by a feeling of curious dread. She does not like it; it is discomforting, and more to the point ridiculous. In truth she does not look up at the sky much these days, especially not at night. The stars that everyone spoke of as so limitless, so infinite have always seemed to her like decorations stuck onto the bottom of an upturned bowl and the sky itself was just that bowl, closing in around the horizon, the world only existing as far as she could see it. It had always given her a vague and doubtless silly sense of claustrophobia.

But tonight, she frowns, going inside and turning away from the sky – seeing that dark bowl slashed across with that startling streak of silver – it was as though the lid of the world was cracking. She had heard people talk; Pierre babbling away about portents and the end of the world. She was not sure about that. There seemed to be something portending the end of the world every couple of years, some bizarre unfounded dread that circulated society in hushed whispers – that same nonsensical sense of awe all over again. All the same, it seemed to her that if the heavy covering of sky that held the whole world in could look so very like there was a crack in it, perhaps the whole thing could just break apart. For the first time the words _brink of war_ and _defining moments in our history_ struck some kind of meaning for her and she found herself shuddering as she drifted slowly up to her suite.

“Get your feet off the table; that’s mahogany,” she sighs wearily, Anatole shrugs, moving only slowly and setting an apple core down on the same small table his boots had previously occupied.

“What’s the matter with you tonight?”

“Nothing, what’s the matter with you?”

“You’re in a mood.”

“No I’m not,” she shrugs too airily; most would hardly notice – “What are you doing here?”

“I live here remember? At least these days, it seems.”

“If you say so. It’s becoming easy to forget. Where have you been?”

She shrugs her cloak off onto the floor, a whisper of green, a waterfall puddling at her feet.

“Oh. Here and there.”

She rolls her eyes.

“Here and there he says, not knowing I know all about it. Shouldn’t you be off still playing your little boy abduction games with Dolokhov?”

“Ohh, I see.”

“No, I’m sure you don’t.”

“She’s moody, she’s chilly, she’s annoyed about our plans –” he leans back heavily in the chair, splaying a hand out in front of him unnecessarily and ostentatiously examining his finger nails – “She’s _jealous.”_

A sudden rage that is not really all that sudden rises up inside her and her hand raises before she can stop it and she whips around to face him. He raises an eyebrow with insolent amusement, rises and takes hold of her wrist, taking advantage of the pause in which she holds herself back.

“Slap me. I might like it.” His fingers tighten around her wrist; she tries to pull away and failing to do so stamps on his foot –

“I am _not_ jealous,” she hisses, yanking her hand back – “I’m _never_ jealous,” she adds too quickly – “Fuck who you want, _je m’en fous.”_

“Liar.”

“Oh for god’s sake, _shut up_ Anatole.” She puts her hands on her hips, squeezes her eyes closed, presses her lips together, everything to hold herself in.

“Are you crying?” he still has that half amused, half teasing tone and it makes her careful, steely attempt at self preservation waver.

“No, I’m not fucking crying,” she spits, wiping her eyes on her sleeve.

“Hey –” he touches her shoulder, gently. She shrugs it off irritated, but in the same breath feels herself turning, pressing her face into his shoulder, partly for comfort, partly so that he cannot see.

“I’m not jealous,” she says again, muffled, standing there stiffly, arms refusing to go round him like they want to. He holds her though, rubbing her back in a way that implies both comfort and that she is being very silly. She realises that in repeating herself she is making the lie more obvious but does not seem to be able to stop herself – “It’s stupid. I’m not jealous. You’re not jealous. Neither of us are ever jealous _.”_ She repeats it leadenly, like a mantra, because it is such a painful damned lie but it has to be true, she has to make it true, has been working on making it true for years. It frustrates her that it can still be so difficult.

He opens his mouth to say something, she has a horrible feeling it might be an awkward platitude, a wooden _there there,_ and he feels it too and closes his mouth again.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says instead.

“What doesn’t matter?” now her arms do go around him.

“Well none of it. None of it matters a bit. Nothing matters and everything is fine. We don’t speak of such things, remember?” It is a mantra more often repeated perhaps than any of the others. He touches her cheek gently, she raises her head, he takes her face in his hand, gently brushing her chin.

“ I _remember.”_ she sighs through gritted teeth – “Don’t –” but he does; he kisses her and there is something so frightening in it that it leaves her breathless, kissing back with no lies and too much passion, too much love; the story of their life, clinging to each other all the while more like children than lovers. They might have stayed that way all night if not for the need to breathe and when she does take a breath, leaning her cheek against his, head half on his shoulder he kisses her forehead and tenderly whispers –

“Lend me some money.”

“What?”

She almost jumps away, a flash of fire in her eyes like that streak across the sky. This time she _does_ slap him.

“ _Va te faire foutre vous merde embulent!”_

Anatole rubs his cheek and looks at her, frowning –

“I – I don’t even know what you just called me –”

“Maybe if you’d _listened_ in our French lessons instead of stopping after _s’enfuir avec moi ma charmante -_ ” she stops, sighs, shakes her head, suddenly incredibly weary – “How much do you want?”

“I suppose about twenty thousand?”

She swears under her breath, but at least so he can understand her this time.

“I don’t have that. You can have ten. Get the rest from Dolokhov.”

“Thank you,” he nods a little stiffly, his eyes shift away from her – “I didn’t –” it occurs to him, only just now that he had timed his request rather terribly – “I didn’t kiss you so you’d lend me the money.”

She snorts, shrugs one shoulder.

“I don’t care. I don’t care about any of it.”

“You really think I’d do that?”

“Yes.”

He shakes his head at her, at a loss what to say –

“I don’t – I’m not – it’s just –” whatever it is, she can see it is more than he can articulate – “Hélène I –”

“ _Don’t!”_ her eyes widen and her heart stops – “Don’t you fucking dare.” He sighs, looks down at the floor, digs a toe into the carpet –

“We won’t be gone that long. It’s not like I’m making a life with her and when I get back –” he grins at her, sunny again – “When I get back you’re going to owe me for a bet well won.”

She rolls her eyes, forces herself to smile. It feels like a crack across her face, finishes burrowing in her desk and shoves the ten thousand ungraciously at his chest.

“You can go – and I don’t care if you never come back,” but she is smiling wryly as she says it and he knows that everything, though damaged, is not broken.

“I will come back.” He clasps her hand at his chest just for a moment, kissing her knuckles briefly; knowing that to do more just now would be unwise, he touches her face with the lightest of fingertips and leaves.

She sighs in his wake, rubbing her forehead with the palm of her hand. She walks over to the window, feeling all of a sudden terribly alone. Outside the clouds have covered up the stars and the comet is gone from view. It is just a mask, she knows, those clouds, everything bright and unforgiving is still there, tearing away at the sky like claws at the heart. Everything is still there beneath that soothing softness of cloud, just as jagged, just as scarred as it was before.

x

When it all comes tumbling down she finds herself reduced to the side lines watching with the rest of Moscow. She wants to be the first to say _I told you so_ even if it is not entirely true. She supposes Dolokhov, who really has that prerogative will probably not take advantage of it.

She is half amused at Pierre having torn up and down the town searching whilst Anatole has been here all along. Well, she amends, first at Dolokhov’s and then here. She is almost saddened that her curious husband could think so little of him, think so little of them both, all this while assuming Anatole is just up to further mischief at the club or the houses they have both been known to frequent when all the while he was only ever with the people that he loved. After all she has berated him both inside and out for the ridiculous carelessness of his plan in the end all she feels is a surge of defensive protectiveness, like she used to get when they were little and he was so very innocent, so surprised when he was told that the thing he had done was bad.

He has hardly changed now, she reflects; too blind to the results of his own actions, he finds himself fully able to believe that he never does any harm. It would positively hurt him to imagine that he had done and she has always protected him from such discovery. It is, she supposes, sighing – a desperate kind of innocence and she wonders if it was right of her to have always nurtured this in him.

She thinks about trying to explain to him some of the things she has learned; how wicked the world is, how corrupt; how judgemental people will inevitably be. Nothing is good, and everything is wrong in the eyes of society. It is a tightrope she has to walk every day, every day feeling like she could fall at any moment. Much as her heart cries for him to join her everywhere she cannot have him up here on that tightrope in the dark; she needs him below her in the light to catch her when she does fall. She remembers him so many years ago, asking her _why_ with tears in her eyes, crying, his head in her lap, clinging to her like he could never let go and none of the lines she could think of in reply, lines people had given her as their reasons, none of them sounded sufficient – none of them _were_ sufficient – _because it’s wrong, because it’s against the law, because we can’t, because I’m your sister, because it’s wrong –_ always back to that which with nothing to bolster it still demanded another _why_ and there was nothing more to offer in reply. He did not, _would not_ understand, and that nonsensical concept of wrongness without reason had only distressed him to a degree she could not bear to witness, the more because she barely understood it herself.

When she is forced to really search herself – a thing she wished she would never have to do – the one truth she always comes down to is that he is and always will be her baby brother and needs to be protected.

The frustration of not being able to do more when Pierre enters the room tears at her to the point where she realises she is on the brink of threatening him for hauling Anatole off. She bites it back – and the urge to follow them. She has no choice and when neither of them then return she still has no choice but to smile and smile and be nice to her guests, anxiety shooting through her all the while whilst she waits for them to leave. She smiles and smiles until everyone is gone and she can stop, though she feels happier – or more relieved at least – with them gone than she did with them here. As soon as the door is closed the smile drops from her face like an overly heavy cloak and she walks quickly, looking in each room for either or both of them.

Pierre is nowhere to be found, and she finds herself relieved; it is not like she really wants to see him anyway. Anatole – finally – is in her room, standing near the bed with his back to the door, but she can tell from the way that he stands that he is distressed by something. He seems to have his face buried in one of her dressing gowns, squeezing it tightly between his hands. He drops it when he hears the door, looking around surprisingly guiltily.

“What’s the matter?” she asks, her voice betraying too much anxiety. She realises her abilities to repress have been frayed by the hours of smiling – “What happened? Where’s Pierre? What are you doing?”

“I –” his forehead crumples down the centre, the same little furrow appearing that he has had since he was two and only just learning how to use it to get everything his own way. He is not using it this time and it has always stabbed her to the heart every time he makes that face for real. She wonders if it partly because of this that he always looks so cheerful, even, sometimes, when he isn’t – “I have to leave Moscow.”

“When?”

“Now,” he spits out a little broken laugh – “Immediately.” He sits down on the side of her bed – “Your husband – ” he takes a deep breath – “Is insane. Do you know he threatened me?”

“He does that.”

“He tried to kill me with a paperweight!”

“At least it wasn’t a table.”

Anatole’s face darkens; he has never forgiven Pierre for that. At the time he had been so angry he had started insisting on duelling him, until she had pointed out that it was duelling that started the whole problem they were in back then anyway. For her sake, he had managed to restrain himself, but she had never seen his face so dark as when she first came to him with that news. The reminder however, is too much just now, and his face crumples. He makes a curious gesture that she realises would be him reaching out to her for a hug if he thought it would be alright to do so.

She feels herself like water, running into his arms and he is the sea always calling her. He clutches her around the waist, pressing his head into her thigh. She shakes her head, cradling his; such a child, she thinks, murmuring gently that it is alright, it will all be alright.

“Now come on,” she says, putting herself up on to the bed, leaning into the pillows, letting him all but crawl into her lap, feeling his face damp against her chest – “What’s this about? Not just the Rostova girl surely? So you’ll go to Petersburg, it doesn’t matter, I’ll follow as soon as I can, you know I will, there’s always a reason.”

She comforts herself with this, knowing it is true. The whole of her married life there have always been reasons. Reasons for Pierre to be absent. Reasons to _accidentally_ turn up wherever Anatole happens to be, reasons for him to have to live with them. Always so many perfectly acceptable reasons. After all, they are family.

“But I feel like –” Anatole is nibbling his tongue in a concentration of alien thought – “No, it sounds stupid. But I feel like something bad is going to happen.”

“That’s silly,” she says, automatically, though it chills her to hear him echo, seemingly, the feeling she had the night she saw the comet – “Silly,” she echoes herself, but she holds him a little bit tighter, kisses the top of his head. He kisses back, wherever his lips can reach, between her breasts, against her collar bones, trailing kisses messily, increasingly intently up her neck.

“No –” she groans, trying to push his head away, but he is like a persistent pony, pushing against her, lips upon her neck, brushing the edge of her ear, greedy and painfully needy – “No we can’t, not now – you’re in enough trouble already –”

It is the wrong thing to say, she realises. Nothing ever makes Anatole more intent on a course of action than being told _no._ But then of course she knows that, so it must have been the thing she wanted to say all along. She is frightened tonight; suddenly the lacquer of the world has started to crack and peel off and all of the things they fight so hard not to say and not to do are threatening to slip through that hole in the sky.

“Don’t _no_ me,” he murmurs into her throat, lips vibrating against her skin, his hand sliding inside her dress, finding her bare skin, pulling the silk away from her shoulders, kissing her shoulders, burying his face in them as though he would like to drown there – “Give me this, I need you, sister please, before I go.”

She wants to laugh it all off like she usually does, to point out that this is not the end of the world, that it is not as though this is the last time they will see each other, but somehow, today it feels like a lie and she cannot say it. She does not want him to stop anyway. For once, just for once, she unlocks her heart, ready to take the inevitable rush of pain.

“I love you,” he whispers, lips almost against her and she can feel him shuddering from the truth of it and there it is, the pain flooding in and she wants to say what she always says when the words slip out like bullets – _no no, don’t, we don’t say that, we don’t_ , _not that –_ because it hurts too much and it twists in the heart and will not leave. She does not say those things, she closes her eyes, wants to say them, hears herself say instead–

“Yes, I love you, you know I love you.” He kisses her then like a kiss in a dream, like the kiss at the end of the fairy tale, heady and full of spiralling scents, too hard, too hot, too desperate.

“I’ve always loved you –” it is like a song they have not sung in years but both remember the words and every note, like a song from childhood, a memory and a rarely to be repeated pleasure – “there was never anyone else, you are –”

“Everything –” she breathes it out in a long shuddering breath and her hands have parted his dishevelled clothes and he slides inside her, and she is water, parting and heaving and they are determined to speak now after so long –

“You fit me so perfectly.”

“You were made to take me. I was made to be inside you.”

“We were made to be like this,” and her arms, her legs, all her limbs around him and her head in the crook of his neck, his head in the hollow of her neck and shoulder and they could not be any closer – “I don’t want to be any further away, if the whole world came in now they couldn’t tear us apart.”

“They won’t, they won’t, not ever.”

It is the only thing that is half a lie; they remember of course, they remember making these promises years ago. But the world did come in and has been tearing away ever since. It does not matter now, their oft repeated lie is suddenly true – _it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, none of it matters._ She comes crying, face wet, his face wet on her shoulder, with her and shaking until breaking point with the intensity of it.

They do not fall apart, do not even roll over onto their backs to breathe; they take the shuddering shivery breathlessness and cling to each other, tiny in the middle of the large bed.

“Don’t say goodbye,” she says, not looking at him.

“I never do” he answers the same.

 _Don’t say goodbye, don’t say I love you, break bad news with a smile on the lips and don’t care about it, don’t ever care about any of it._ They have lived by these rules so long now, it feels like the coldest kind of nakedness to have broken so many of them now.

“It’s not like we’ll never see each other again,” she says and it is the last thing she says before he leaves.

She lies in bed for a long time later on her own, the sky darkening outside. She thinks about the bet and how she had said it was a winning scenario either way. It feels just now as though really, both of them have lost. Later she goes to the window and searches the sky for the comet again, but cannot find it. She closes her eyes on the dark of the sky and remembers another world, a childish game that is better than reality. For once there was a strange land full of strange beasts and beautiful flowers, no two of which were ever alike except them. Her world is a jewel, a place to live in behind her eyes, a place where that unformed ridiculous _wrong_ cannot exist and they will never be separated. She glares up at the sky in defiance, her world glittering out of her eyes.

And the sky looks back, slashed silver from side to side.

__x__


	29. Anatole, August 1812

**Anatole, August 1812**

 

“Supposing you died tomorrow.”

Anatole blinks, firelight crackles and wood smoke smarts in his eyes. He had been smiling vaguely to himself; staring, not really seeing, into the fire, and sipping something pungent out of Dolokhov’s flask, trying to decide whether he liked it or not. He had been enjoying the sounds of the camp – muted talking around the fires and from in tents, the sounds of men and the night time, crackling wood and soft footfalls in the dark. He had been enjoying the feel and perhaps the taste of the drink, the warmth of the fire and Dolokhov’s hunched presence beside him.

“Eh?” he looks up, feeling warm and soft inside, curiously safe, smiling at Dolokhov benignly – “What’s that?”

Dolokhov has a thoughtful look, hands clasped between his knees as he watches the fire and Anatole, his thoughts perhaps more understandable to the former than the latter for Anatole can love until he bursts but is not sure he will ever understand even the people closest to him. He appears to have been thinking so intently.

“It’s going to be big, this –” Dolokhov gestures not quite as expansively as his statement would seem to warrant.

“Did you never wonder that you might not live past tomorrow?”

Anatole’s forehead falls into a furrow. It seems like a strange, gloomy thing to ask or to have even been wondering. He cannot see its connection to anything.

“No,” he says, wide eyed and innocent of thought – “No, never – goodness, do you?”

Dolokhov shrugs, a gesture Anatole at least knows by now means he has been thinking about it more deeply than he would like to let on. He looks at Anatole steadily, both their eyes black in this light, with flame dancing inside.

“I used to think about it,” he says slowly – “Just about every day, I thought – what if I don’t wake up tomorrow? Sometimes, when I was a boy I thought – maybe I’d freeze overnight and never wake up for cold. Then I thought about the people I’d leave behind, what they would do without me. There wasn’t a choice about it – I had to live for them. Now I think – there’s still no choice, live or die, it’s all the same to someone – perhaps, I don’t know.”

“I never thought about it,” Anatole looks at him wonderingly – “Life is so much fun – I used to say that to Helene.” He smiles, turning his head for the umpteenth time – whichever angle one puts oneself at part of the face gets too warm from the fire, he bats away the smoke as it gusts suddenly towards him, tiny pieces of charcoal and ember flicking up at him on the lazy late summer air.

“She always told me I didn’t think about the future enough and she was probably right – but then I figured if I didn’t think about the future I wouldn’t be able to worry about it either. I always thought she worried too much and where’s the sense in that? If I was to spend all my time fretting about what might happen I wouldn’t be enjoying the thing that is happening. And what’s that for, eh? Why spoil things when they’re good, there’s nothing wrong until there’s something wrong and then – ” he shrugs – “Well it always turns out well enough one way or the other doesn’t it?”

Dolokhov looks at him in a way Anatole cannot quite fathom, but he thinks it looks fond – well, he cannot imagine the people he loves being anything else towards him. Then Dolokhov laughs, a short bark from his chest that makes him seem to shrug with it.

“Yes, I should have known you’d say that. You have a gift for happiness; I never saw it in anyone else. I can’t ever imagine you sad for long.”

“I don’t see the point of it,” he shrugs – “As long as I have you and Helene – what’s to worry about?”

“You worry more for our lives than for your own?”

“If I was dead I’d be dead – I don’t suppose I’d know, but if you weren’t here, or Helene –” he pauses and bites his lip – “I couldn’t imagine a world without her. She’s been there since I was born. Why are we talking about such sad, silly things, eh?”

Dolokhov sits up straighter; somehow he looks more relaxed like this than when he was slouching forwards.

“No, you’re right of course. Why spend what could be the last night of our lives thinking about it being the last? What would you think about instead?”

“You mean – if I had to make the most of the last time we had thinking about the best times we had?”

“If you like.”

“I’d remember the time we spent in Budapest, just the three of us. I used to pretend we were the only three people in the world. Perhaps it couldn’t have lasted forever and I _do_ like other people and other places – but if I’d had to choose a time and stay like that forever it would have been then. I remember the sound of the door to our apartment – we’d be in the bedroom in the early afternoon and I’d hear you come in and the door would bash softly against some bottles on the floor and I knew it was your tread and I wondered if you’d come join us in bed or wait in the next room until we came out.”

“You always smiled to see me as though you never had before.”

“I was always pleased to see you. I remember the time we walked up the hill, all three of us, I remember your voice and the way that she laughed but I don’t remember what any of us said, just that I was happy. We were all happy. If I had to live in memory forever I think I’d live there. You?”

“Perhaps. Or I’d live in an eternal morning over breakfast, with you just come in from riding going on about something you’d seen, smelling of horses and outdoors, more awake than any of us, Helene still half asleep mumbling how can you be so lively at such an hour, she’d smell like sleepiness and coffee –”

“And custard,” Anatole nods, grinning, Dolokhov laughs –

“Custard?”

“I wanted to say sugar – I knew it would sound better, custard doesn’t sound romantic, does it? But it’s the closest I can get – a – a specific kind of sweetness. I can’t live in memory, Fedya, the present is always too – here. Fire smells and warmth and grass and insects murmuring behind the voices all around us. I’ll remember tonight and like it too, I think.”

“You like everything.”

“Yes, yes why not – not every _one_ though.”

“Oh? Who have you ever hated?”

“I didn’t say I’d ever hated anyone – I just don’t _like_ everyone.” He thinks for a few minutes – “Father perhaps, now and then, and when I was little I thought I hated Hyppolite –” he laughs – “When I was little sometimes I thought I hated Helene, when we’d had a fight and she was right about it. But that was silly. I never hated anyone.”

“No? What about Pierre?”

Anatole shrugs widely, suddenly benign, even magnanimous –

“What about Pierre. I don’t hate him, not really, he was my friend. He still would have been if not for papa. It’s not his fault I suppose. Besides, he’s too much of an idiot to hate.”

Anatole pokes the fire with a stick, pushing the logs down into the embers; it is dying down now and all around them  the sounds of camp are quietening as the last of the men but them head into their tents. Anatole shifts across the large log they are using as a bench until he is leaning against Dolokhov, sleepy and happy and utterly unwilling to follow the example. Dolokhov makes him think of a rock, a warm rock, tethering him to the earth before he floats away on his own flippancy. Dolokhov smiles, shifting, letting Anatole all but lie across the log, his head against his chest. Anatole makes a little grunting noise of satisfaction, putting Dolokhov’s arms around him, using him and the coat he is wearing as his own blanket. They sit there for a long time not speaking, Anatole smiling to himself, listening to Dolokhov’s heartbeat. It feels like a secret, that gentle thumping sound, as though this is the whole pulse of the world. It makes him feel connected to everything and only from feeling so grounded can he speak out loud the flights of fantasy he has only ever shared with Helene.

“When I was little,” he says, dreamily into the dark and the comforting arms of that heartbeat – “We made up a world – something – oh you know, right out of fantasy, nonsense. But it was such pretty nonsense, so beautiful. A silly thing I suppose, but we spent _hours_ there – creating it I mean, colouring it all in, adding trees and flowers, once I even drew a map. It was like travelling or – I don’t know – art perhaps – all those things all at once. We invented the places, describing them as though we had really been there, sometimes as though we were there at the time. We had our own castle there, a cave made out of ice, rivers and forests and only the two of us ever allowed to go there. There were dragons, horses – all that sort of thing. We worked out all the shapes and colours of things until we knew them as well as anything in the real world. If either of us disagreed we’d tell each other we were remembering it wrong, not that we _were_ wrong, you know? We would talk about the journeys we had had there like you would talk about your own adventures – like they were real – and they were in a way -  do you – do you know what I mean at all?”

Dolokhov nods slowly, looking at Anatole with eyes that shine in the firelight.

“I do,” he says and his voice sounds rough, from the smoke Anatole supposes.

“I know it sounds silly,” he presses, reaching for something, not even fully sure why he feels this need to describe and explain  - “but I still go there in my head sometimes, when it’s late and I’m alone or just waking up sometimes. Helene said when she got married, she said that I could always find her there when she wasn’t close enough in the real world. And I always _can_. It’s easy to picture. I know she’ll be waiting at a castle window for me, or in the meadow where we first started out, she’ll have grass in her skirts and flowers in her hair and everything will be the way it should be and I think –” Anatole struggles to express something he suddenly feels might be too big for him – “I think it’s good to have the back up, I mean I _like_ this world, this life and people are always telling me I’m not practical – father gives me that face when I’ve been having too much fun and says “That’s not real life, Anatole,” but – have you noticed people only say that when they’re implying that real life is a bad thing? Or if not a bad thing certainly not as fun as the thing I was doing to begin with and so why would I want that, eh? I think a world where I can have fun is better than another kind and so why can’t that be the real one? Being happy is better than anything else and so –” he sighs in satisfaction at his own conclusion – “So I think I’ll take two. Two worlds.” He nods, pleased with himself and his logic.

Dolokhov laughs kindly and squeezes Anatole in a tight, rough hug. Anatole smiles; he feels cherished, like a treasure.

“You do understand what I mean, don’t you?”

“I do” Dolokhov nods, Anatole feels his chin on the top of his head – “But I don’t know why you’re telling me.”

“Well because –” Anatole frowns, not knowing it himself until he says it – “Because I didn’t want another world – not even mine and Helene’s – that I didn’t think you could be a part of too and if you know about it, then maybe – if I need to – I can always find you there as well.”

Dolokhov laughs softly, but there is an odd sound in it as though he might just as easily cry.

“Dear boy,” he murmurs. “You know, it’s almost dawn. We should get some sleep.”

“I don’t want to sleep,” Anatole pouts. Dolokhov sighs, how many times has he heard this before?

“Well I don’t! It’s such a beautiful night and I like the – the way it feels. It doesn’t feel like a war. It’s just nice, being warm and safe and here with you.”

“I think you might define _safe_ differently from other people, dear.”

“Well but I feel it,” he insists, burrowing down comfortably against Dolokhov on their log, taking up at least three quarters of it. He looks up at the stars for a while in silence, not really thinking, just feeling the warm and cold of the night air on his face and hearing that reassuring heartbeat in his ears.

“Fedya?” he says eventually, sleepily now.

“Hmm?”

“I love you.” He feels Dolokhov’s throat as he swallows hard.

“I mean –” he goes on – “I love everything, or anyway I like everything – but you and Helene – you’re the only two people I really, _really_ love. It’s like you’re – _me –_ you know? And I’m me too – we’re all –” he yawns, loudly, contentedly – “Me.”

Dolokhov shakes his head tolerantly and it seems to Anatole that he feels _happy._ He is glad. He wonders what he is thinking but not for very long because after all he falls asleep, face turned to the stars, lulled by the gentle _thump thump_ of the heart.

___x___

 

**Well I made my beta cry....:-)**


	30. Hélène, September 1812

 

**Trigger warnings: Suicide and Tokophobia.**

**Hélène, September 1812**

 

“Darling, I know you’re bored but is this not just a little bit extreme? Just the tiniest bit?”

“Bilibin don’t be tedious,” Hélène groans, smiling wearily. “Not you. I’ve had just about everybody’s tediousness but yours.”

She picks at a thread in a cushion, pulling a creamy coloured scar through the red brocade, feeling the pattern of it without really seeing it, only realising later that she has all but destroyed it. He is right, she supposes, but she still just feels bored nonetheless, uninterested in her own drama. Whilst all of society whispers at her scandals and intrigues – even her mother has deigned to be shocked enough to come and speak to her about it, wonders will never cease – she seems to find herself the only one to remain tiredly disinterested by it all. She feels more like a spectator of the play in which she is the star than the principal player herself. It is a tedious play, she thinks, fast becoming a farce. The parasitic lifeform she has still not managed to shift is making her angrier by the day.

“Be serious now darling, just for a moment.”

“Really Bilibin, must we? You know how I count on you to be otherwise.”

She uses her public voice, languid and drawn, a musical lazy oboe tone as opposed to the fluting lilt of natural speech that she reserves for so few. Bilibin is a strange one; a man she has no chance, wish or expectation of sleeping with and with whom she can therefore be far more herself than with other men. She learned early in life that female friends were neither an option nor a desire for her. Male _friends_ are, if she is using the term honestly, almost as few and far between – which is to say friendships are not really something she cultivates in any kind of honesty.

And so, with Anatole and Dolokhov both gone these two months or more Bilibin is the closest to someone she can talk to on any kind of half way genuine level; and they only even manage to maintain this level of confidentiality – a level that is nearly but not quite intimacy – by talking about personal matters only in the same tone in which they might talk about the weather.

“Well then, what is it?”

“Are you quite well?”

“Whatever do you mean? I do hope you’re not implying I look otherwise.”

“God forbid. Merely asking. I’d hate to see you brought down with that newfound sense of catholic guilt.”

She slaps him lightly on the back of the hand, repressing a smirk; nobody else has dared poke fun at her conversion and she would argue it genuinely with anyone else if they did.

“I’m fine,” she says lightly “I’m always fine.”

Actually, she reflects later when she is alone, she was overwhelmed that anyone would ask, at the same time as being concerned that anything to the contrary is obvious. She almost wishes she could have told the truth but that would have been ridiculous.

The truth is – she tells it to the mirror, unable to avoid seeing the signs of weariness now that she knows someone else has spotted them – the truth is she does not feel good at all. It is partly the medicine, she is sure – if that is the right word for it – and partly her condition which she hates as it is. She feels invaded, and at a time where she does not need the added irritation. She is not sure why it is proving so difficult this time; it is not as though she has not got herself out of similar situations before and it is largely her dread that this time she will be unlucky that has motivated her two potential new marriages, as if she was not already tired of the one she had. Reflecting on it all is like picking up a book she has no interest in reading. Her existence, always on some kind of hiatus when Anatole and Dolokhov are away with the army, feels more in limbo than ever. She pushes it all from her mind, watching herself brush her hair, change into her dressing gown, always watching her reflection watching her from the mirror.

She is engaged heavily in all of this negation of thought when a maid servant knocks on the door timidly announcing that her father wishes to see her.

“Now?” she frowns, scowling. “At this hour? Tell him I’ll speak with him tomorrow.”

“If you please my lady, he says it’s urgent.”

She nods, sighing softly, groaning loudly when the maid has left, pushing her chair angrily aside and tying her dressing gown tight enough to hurt, glaring down at her belly as she does so; _that’ll teach you._ She goes down to the drawing room in a quiet, petulant temper, frowning in lack of comprehension at the unprecedented sight of Hyppolit sat stonily at the table, eyes red as though he has been crying – though she has never seen such a thing before and cannot tell. He looks up at her silently when she comes in, with a look that she swears could be sympathy if it was one he had ever levelled her way before. Her frown deepens, despite herself; she cannot think of a single reason for him to look at him like that.

“What is it? Whatever is the matter?” She almost laughs. He flails helplessly, gesturing their father’s study door.

“I –” he stammer – “You should –” she rolls her eyes and marches past him.

“Papa?” despite her irritation it comes out in a whisper, Hyppolit’s evident though unusual distress has discomforted her more than she realised – “What’s going on? What’s the matter with everyone?”

The Prince looks up at her over the paper in his hands with very much the same look she saw on her brother. He starts to speak but no sound comes out.

“Well for heaven’s sake,” she snaps. “What’s the _matter_ with everyone?”

Another awkward beat of silence, her father’s mouth moves for too long before he finally gets any words out –

“It’s Anatole.”

“Anatole?” She echoes, squinting, the same squint, the same furrow in the forehead that he makes when confused, she knows it, shaking her head gently – “What about Anatole?” She half smiles, about to add _what’s he done now?_ It is the only natural question, but something in her father’s face stops her, his eyes dropping to the paper in his hands – “What’s that?”

“Casualty lists –” his voice sounds far away – “From Borodino.”

“Borodino?” it means nothing to her – nothing more than a memory of a conversation – another site of conflict with the French, the dates and place names all run together in her head, never seeming like something genuinely touching on her life. Her father is holding it out to her limply. She takes it automatically, confused and frowning –

“Why do I –” the words _why would I care?_ dry up on her tongue, sticking in her throat as everything starts to make sense, her brain slowly catching up to what her father is saying to her. She feels dizzy, as though she might faint, throat dry, head reeling sickly. She gropes for something, anything, an edge, her hand hitting the back of a chair, using it to hold herself up, wondering why this feeling as though she might fall. Her eyes flicker around the room which won’t seem to stop moving, falling onto the paper, scanning the list of names that seems to go on and on until one alone comes into focus –

_Kuragin, Anatole Vasilyevich – death resulting from injury._

“Oh,” she says numbly, watching the paper fall from her hand, following its slow drift to the floor with her eyes. It seems to her as though the fall goes on for a long time. There is nothing inside her chest. When she looks down at her hand she wonders what it is, who it belongs to.

“Hélène –” her father’s voice, like from outside a dream, everything is moving so slowly, why she wonders, why has the world slowed down? “Hélène, did you –”

“Yes –” she blinks rapidly, shaking the fog from her head – “No –” she smiles, she is relieved to feel herself smile. “But it’s a mistake –” she laughs a little, as one would at a joke that is faintly, but only faintly, amusing. She shrugs. “Of course it’s a mistake, really papa –”

“ _Hélène –”_ she feels like a child, his voice is heavy with a sigh, he speaks to her as sternly as though she is still a child. “Hélène it’s not a mistake. It arrived with Kutuzov’s dispatch this evening”.

He is making words; it is rather funny she thinks. He sounds so serious. The words make no sense.

“You’re being ridiculous,” she says, loudly and firmly. “You’re being ridiculous and I’m going to bed.”

She turns and walks out of the room with her nose in the air, ignoring Hyppolit on her way.

When she gets to her room she sleeps, almost instantly. She feels exhausted, not quite sure why.

In the morning her first thought on waking is that there is something wrong in her world. Her second thought is that she feels sick. As she reaches for a bowl she thinks _this is it, this is the thing that is wrong, this stupid thing in me still._ She sits back, remembers, is sick again until she is dry heaving, nothing left inside her. She sleeps again, perhaps for an hour. When she finally gets up she drinks water, dresses, composes herself, watches the mirror carefully as she fixes her face and hair. He isn’t there.

He isn’t there all that day, not anywhere, or the next.

She is hardly aware of her movements. She finds herself watching her brother and father nervously, constantly, waiting for them to say something, to take it back, to admit that it was a joke and a stupid one. But they don’t. When people call on them all she hears is sympathy and as the days go on it starts to become clear to her that this is all they are going to hear, that it is not unfounded, that it was not a joke.

At other times she feels an immense surge of relief like a great wave come to wash all the wrongness away, all of the fog and the sickness and perplexity – she will see the back of Hyppolit’s head and smile, on the verge of running to him, _Anatole! on her lips._ But he turns and he is not and he turns and he is not, every time he is not who he should be and she crashes again.

The second evening she lies on her bed and cries, shaking until she feels bruised with it and no longer aware why she is crying. She dreams sweet dreams that night and Anatole is with her in all of them and she wakes up and he is not and it is worse. She stares into the mirror for hours on end, willing her face to change, willing his ghost to appear beside her, but there is nothing. After staring for too long she cannot even see her own face.

The next day, or the next – she has lost track of time – it occurs to her that she has been forgetting to take her medicine and it was supposed to be so carefully meted out, she remembers being told that. She curses, every curse she has ever heard under her breath at the thought that after all this she could end up giving birth as well. She turns the bottle in her hand; it is delicate brown glass, gleaming amber in the candlelight and after she has taken a  drop she holds it still, staring at it for a long time before smiling and putting it down.

She nods when she sets the bottle back down, smiles to herself and retreats to her writing desk with sudden purpose. After the first two words of her letter the purpose seems to flee her and she stares down at the two words with a sudden sense of guilt.

_Dearest Fedya,_

She stares at them for a long time blankly. She wonders if it is alright to start a message in so familiar a manner. She has never written to anyone in such a manner before – except for Anatole. A crazy urge to write to him too taps maddeningly on the back of her brain. _What do I write?_ she thinks. _What the hell do I write?_ That sense of guilt comes back; it occurs to her that the Catholics may be on to something with their confession and absolution. _I should go to my confessor_ she thinks, laughing at herself as she thinks it – _talk to him, make it all alright._ She remembers that for it to work she has to feel bad for the thing she has done. She does not feel bad, not for this, not for loving, even if it kills her. It has killed her. She owes god nothing – but Dolokhov – Dolokhov she does feel bad towards, and in the end it is guilt that gives her the start to her goodbye –

 _I’m sorry –_ she begins.

The little brown bottle rolls, tickling across the floor, bumping hollowly against a chair leg, all the bright colour and the amber gleaming gone and she curls into the middle of her bed which feels far too big for her, heady and flying to begin with, reaching for his hand.

 _I’m coming,_ she thinks – _coming to meet you, you could at least take my hand._ But she gets nothing in return. She is flying now, low above a meadow in the fading summer light, and the long grasses are gold and red and as she drops down softly more and more blue and pink and silver because they said that they could be and it is their world to paint in any colour that they wish.

 He is here. Her heart sings and takes wing because she knew that he would be, down there beside the stream, on a rock under the waterfall, and down on the bank a single drop of water hangs from a leaf and glints in the light of seven rainbow suns before it falls; and the slow drawn falling of that diamond water is a steady tinkling drip alongside the chuckling song of the stream. It is peaceful here and even Anatole behaves, catching her when she comes down to earth, laughing as they roll over in the grass together and the sun and the water still laughing together with them.

It is agony, like her insides are being torn apart, and she thinks _god how can this be when I am torn already?_ but metaphors do not change the physical and she is doubled over biting her lips and almost screaming, not wanting to, not wanting anyone to come and _help_ or _save_ her. She is doing that herself. For a moment she thinks _maybe I made a mistake_ as she clutches and reaches in the bedsheets for a hand that is not there. She remembers the first time he went away and the slow feeling of tearing inside her that has sped up now too much for her to heal it with thought or with the knowledge that this is not forever, that he will be back. She remembers their last night before he left and what she nearly said and she opens her mouth to repeat herself but the sound will not come out –

_If we never said goodbye you never really left._

And she wishes hard but she does not know for what.

And the sky looks down and does not care.

__x__

 

**Well I made myself sad! Just to continue on the theme of sad: we are gonna get to hear the whole of Helene’s letter to Dolokhov in the next chapter! And finally catch up on Dolokhov’s reactions to all of these events. :-)**

**On a lighter note, Bilibin is Helene’s GBF and you can’t tell me otherwise. :-)**


	31. Dolokhov, October 1812

 

 

**Dolokhov, October 1812**

 

Somehow, he thinks, somehow once again I appear to have become a legend. Even the men on his own side do not seem to be sure if they admire him or if they ought not to be utterly terrified of him. On account of either, or both, they maintain a safe distance, even when they are apparently delighting in his presence. Good. It is good this way. How far he has come in the (how do I tell her) eyes of the world.

He keeps hearing this; in how much esteem he is regarded. There is a definite pride to be taken in it, and he does. He makes it his business to stay proud, aloof – untouchable perhaps. He is not sure when it was he moved beyond a state of pure anger (maybe she knows, dear god, how is she?) but it feels like a long time ago.

It feels as though there has never been any other life; never any existence beyond this cold white world. The rest was all a dream. Cold is good for him now, he can do cold and when the early mornings catch him out he finds himself thinking _of course_ how could the world be anything other than white now all the colour has been leached out of it. Who knew? _Who knew, dear boy –_ he says it to the blank white morning sky, so far and so heavy – _who knew you were all the brightness I needed? Who knew your going could leave the world so cold and empty and white. That you, in your silliness and sweetness, your vast selfishness and your careless ceaseless enthusiasm for life could leave the world so numb and void._ Enthusiasm for life. He will not cry. He does not cry. Killing is the sweetest thing there is. He does it with a fierceness nobody recognises as numbness.

“Sometimes it seems unfair, doesn’t it?” Denisov says one night, ponderously staring into the camp fire’s flickering light – “Picking them off like this when we’re already retreating?”

Dolokhov grunts, more or less non-comitally but there is enough of a negative in the tone of it for Denisov to shrug –

“No,” he nods in thoughtful agreement – “No I suppose not. Don’t you want another log on that, eh?”

Dolokhov turns his back on the embers.

“Let it die,” he says. Let it die. These faint flames are pointless now that the sun has gone out.

People know better than to offer up unsolicited conversation. He would rather not sit around a fire, enjoying its warmth and talking as though with friends. He would rather never do that at all, no, not ever again. Nothing hurts more than the memory of happiness, nothing at all. Try as he might he remembers sitting up all night, watching the fire dim down and the sun come up, a warm weight against his chest and another, just as sweet, beating against his ribs. Anatole had said again and again that he could not sleep and would not sleep but in the end it was Dolokhov who had not closed his eyes all of that short tender night, that lazy _I love you_ humming in his chest and his soul swelling with the promise he had made to Helene. _Look after him,_ she had said _Look after my little brother Fedya, someone has to –_ and he had sworn to himself silently that night, _dearest I will look after you forever._

How very brief, how fleeting forever had turned out to be.

How strange that he could keep a promise to himself and his family to look after them and keep it his whole life but break the same promise made to his second family only months later.

 _I have to stay alive for them_ – he remembers saying this to Nikolai a hundred years ago. It had always been true; it still is true, only now where it used to be inspiring it feels like a weight around his neck. He wears it in silence.

It has been one of the better days. Their successes against the French have by far outweighed their failures and the world has gained the only colour it ever does these days; the splash of bright blood across the snow. He lives for that, as much as for anything now; that shocking spray of red, fading too quickly into pink and then like everything – into nothing.

And so he is smiling crookedly at something Denisov has said in the late afternoon, the sky turning grey, when the letters come. He is mildly surprised to have anything, let alone two in one day, but he does little more than raise an eyebrow and put them away until the evening.

When he is alone later he sits down on his bedroll and pulls the letters out, holding them for a moment in his hand as though weighing them. After deliberating for too long he opens the smaller one first and finds the envelope to contain his life handed back to him. It is from a hospital just outside Moscow and writes to bring him news that they believe he has been misinformed in the chaos following Borodino and that the man he had been asking after, Prince Anatole Kuragin, is alive and in good hands after his injury on the field. He stares at the letter for a long time, unable to comprehend it, too shocked by the news to fully recognise the rising delight he feels for what it is. He wonders what the injury is, supposes they assume that he knows, that he was there. But he did not see what happened, there was only so far they could stay side by side and when the world blew up around them he lost Anatole in the smoke. He is finally starting to feel his chest open up in a genuine breath of relief when he opens the second letter.

_Dearest Fedya,_

_I’m sorry –_

Her writing is a mess. He scowls; he has seen her writing before, it does not look like this, as though she was panicking when she wrote it, and she has never addressed him that way before, nor apologised for anything in her life. A black feeling of dread rushes up his chest, chasing out the hope that had just begun to rise in his throat.

_I’m sorry. I’m so sorry – I don’t know what I’m writing, I don’t know what to say. I don’t want to do this, I never thought – no I do, I do want to do this, what else is there?_

Her writing becomes almost illegible. He can picture her too clearly, crying as she writes it. Putting her pen down in a fury of not knowing how to go on, pacing the room before she sits back at the desk. She starts again on a new line.

_I wish I knew what to say, I’ve always known what to say, haven’t I? I prided myself on being the one who knew what do, how to survive. But I don’t. Not now. I can’t. I wish I could tell you otherwise but I can’t do this. I can’t. I want to be able to tell you I can keep going for you, I feel like it ought to be enough. I love you and I hope – I hope to think that you love me and it feels good, to love to know or think you know and it’s wrong of me that this cannot be enough so that’s why I had to write – to say sorry – I don’t think I said sorry to anyone in my life. But I have to. Because I don’t want you to think there was anything you could have done. I don’t want you to think that you weren’t enough but – oh I’m afraid you will anyway and I don’t know how to help that. Selfish of me. But I’ve always been selfish, we both have, haven’t you always told us so? Well at least this will be the last selfish thing I can do even if it is monumental._

_I wish – I wish I could be strong enough to stay. If I did it would be for you. But I suppose sometimes it is the height of bad manners not to know when it is time to leave and I fear I have already overstayed my welcome. He shouldn’t have gone before me, it’s not right. He was my baby brother and I was supposed to look after him. I failed. I thought we were both so strong. I find I keep being wrong._

_Don’t keep this. Forget the silly things I’ve said here. Don’t remember this. Remember us as we were in Budapest when I could believe that the three of us were the only three people in the world. It would have been nice, wouldn’t it? Remember us hand in hand in hand or in a pile amongst the sheets in the early afternoon. Remember us alive and whole. Forget this. I wish so much but I cannot stay when – god what a cliché it is, forgive me but half of me has already gone and it remains for me only to say -_

_I love you and goodbye,_

_H._

Impossible. It seems impossible, first to believe such news can follow so fast on the heels of the other and impossible too to imagine this note is anything other than what it is. It has been this and not the other, he realises that he has been expecting and dreading all this time. He never for a moment imagined she could be alright alone. They came together didn’t they? Even these two pieces of horribly mismatched news had to come together; it is sickeningly fitting at the same time as it is awful.

He thinks about what she said, almost the same as Anatole said to him on that last night – _remember us as we were in Budapest – the only three people in the world._ He did not think about it that much when Anatole said it, it was true, for once he had been taking the boy’s own advice and enjoying the time that they had that night. He had not thought, sat at that fire earlier that night, that he could have felt such happiness at such a time, but in the end he had. He had been happy enough with his present not to think of a time that Anatole clearly felt to be at least as sweet. Helene too. Now that she has, for the millionth and last time, unknowingly echoed her brother almost word for word – now, hearing those words again he still cannot think about it. He cannot go back. Not yet. He fears if he goes to the past now he will never come back from it.

No, he can only think about two things and they are far from any possibility of good things. He thinks about seeing Anatole again, only the pleasure he might have felt in such contemplation – the pleasure and delight that was like such a brief awakening back into life before opening that second letter – it rises and rises again only to be crushed again and again with that question – _how do I tell him?_ And a part of him wants to laugh, remembering how often he has wondered the same thing in reverse ever since Borodino.

He sits in the same position, not moving to rise or lie down all that night. _Helene_ he thinks, numbly, and he finds himself blinking more than he should but he still seems incapable of tears. They were so bright, so dazzling, his world had turned beneath them as though they were a crystal chandelier, just as splendid, just as breakable. _I thought we were so strong,_ she said and he understands her because, in between thinking the opposite and those long strange tender nights spent almost solely in the grip of the urge to protect them both from the world - he had thought it too.

 

__x__


	32. Dolokhov, 1813

 

**Dolokhov, 1813**

He had let this go on too long. He knew it. but knowing was useless; how could he – how _dare_ he even tell Anatole what he had to tell him when he was already fighting so much and doing so well all things considered. And how could he not?

He had considered the practicalities of seeing Anatole again well in advance of their meeting but he could still barely bring himself to imagine it. He tried not to imagine Anatole as he had been before either; to void himself both of memory and expectation. He had expected to find him in a state of utter dejection and he had been ready for that. The hope and happiness that lit up Anatole’s face when he saw him was somehow much worse. He had thrown his arm around Dolokhov’s neck all but crying in happiness as though it had been long years rather than mere months since they had seen each other. Perhaps to Anatole it had been. He told him later how differently time passed in hospital, how it nibbled and dragged at the soul. How he had thought he might go mad or give up altogether only for the thought of him and Helene. He bit his tongue at that, as he was learning to do. In the end Dolokhov had had to detach Anatole gently before the nurses started looking at them strangely. It was when he heard that Anatole had already been half flirting with them in the last few days that he knew how well he was recovering, at least in spirit.

They did not talk about anything important or necessary until the time came to leave and Anatole’s face clouded over at the sight of the chair he had taken so many pains to find.

“It’s ugly” he pronounced – “Do I have to?”

“Do you want to stay here another few months?”

“God no” Anatole pouted, swivelled round to sit on the edge of the bed. It was the first time Dolokhov realised that he had seen it. He gave a deep sigh of thanks for his ability to _not_ react when necessary. he could see Anatole watching him with a wary, challenging look, daring him to be disgusted, to be sad, to dare sympathy. He did none of them and thought he saw Anatole half smile at his doing so – “Help me” he said. He made it sound like an order rather than a plea and Dolokhov was glad of it. It felt as though one of the battles he had been expecting had been cancelled. If it had been him he was not sure how easily he could have asked for help; he should have known Anatole would not be the same.

They had agreed to go to Dolokhov’s new house, just on the outskirts of Moscow. His mother’s was too small and they did not want to trouble her with this, besides they could have barely got the chair through the door. Also, to his relief, Anatole did not want to go his father’s or his own home, but then –

“I don’t want her to see me like this” he said – “Not yet.”

Dolokhov closed his eyes briefly, heavily, relief replaced so quickly with that sinking feeling he was becoming far too familiar with. He wondered if he should just say it, if this was the best lead he was ever going to get – _That’s – not something you need to worry about at least._ It was on the tip of his tongue, just like her absence was a black hole on the edges of his heart, blurring everything – and then he could not say it. He could not try to make this positive. His clouded heart rebelled and feeling how much it hurt him only made him dread for the thousandth time how hard it would hit Anatole. And so he let the moment slip by him and it set a precedent for letting the disclosure go unsaid over and again for longer than it should have gone on.

It was for the best, he told himself, and the argument in favour of this was more than substantial after all. Anatole was fighting so hard by day and suffering so badly by night – he could not put this on him too, not yet.

The nightmares at least were something he had prepared himself for. Somewhere in the midst of everything that had happened Anatole had become afraid of the dark, afraid to sleep from a fear that he might not wake up. He would wake repeatedly through the night, shaking and crying, asking what was happening, why he could not move his legs and the battle all around him still. What he had not known was that the good dreams would be even worse. Anatole would wake from those and for a few minutes smile, forgetting what had happened, waking from dreams of running and moving to stand up, surprised every time and confused as to why he could not. He was much lower on those days than the days following nightmares.

But Dolokhov barely left him and over the weeks, that turned into months he saw Anatole improve by degrees, hopping that he was helping as much as he hoped he was. Helping included a wild combination of tenderness and bullying often leading up to the final damning “Fine just don’t then” which always provoked Anatole to move when nothing else would. He was stubbornly set against trying to walk if he had to do it with crutches and Dolokhov was forced to encourage and ignore him by turns, turning a blind eye to his tantrums and enthusiastic praise to his moments of positivity.

It would have been easier, he knew, if Anatole’s largest motivational factor towards recuperation had not been Helene. Here Dolokhov remained at an absolute loss how participate. He could not bring himself to say _do it for her_ which might have been the most winning possible argument but he could not bear to crush the only enthusiasm Anatole seemed to be able to muster and tell him the truth. And the more optimistic Anatole became the more he _did_ talk about her.

“I should write to her don’t you think?” he said – “She must be so worried, we should at least let her know I’m safe here with you – I mean what if she thinks otherwise? What if she thinks I’m dead?” he laughed, Dolokhov winced, mumbling that he had already written, _hating_ the lie, hating everything other than Anatole’s being alive when he had expected the worst. he could not make Anatole stop, he never _could_ make Anatole stop talking when he wanted to talk and he wanted to talk about _her._ Dolokhov had thought this was the hardest thing from the first day he had met the boy, that he could never be alone with him because he would always bring her up. He remembered with crashing guilt how much he had wished, before he knew her, that she had not existed, however foolish such jealousy had been. He had never imagined he could have mourned her like this or been stuck as well between mourning and Anatole’s painfully misdirected enthusiasm.

“Do you think she’ll mind?” he would chatter away, oblivious to Dolokhov’s pale and strained expression – “She used to say it hurt her if I as much as cut myself – maybe she’ll hate it. maybe she won’t want to look at me what do you think?” Dolokhov smiled tightly, wishing he could at least not ask him questions – “Maybe she’ll be alright if she knows I’m alright, Dolokhov - I have to be _alright_. Throw me that crutch, I’m going to try again!”

Dolokhov could only smile at him, weary and sad, wishing he could simply be annoyed that Anatole once again seemed to think more of her when she was not there than himself when he was. But he could not be that petty any more, not for the world.

“I can’t wait to see her again!” Anatole would babble, his eyes big with excitement – “Maybe we should have gone back straight away eh? No, better to get better first. Oh but I wish she was here! It’s been so long! Do you remember the last time we were all together Fedya? It feels like so long ago – I can’t wait for that to happen again. Everything only feels right when we’re all of us together. I never thought it would be _this long._ I wish I’d said goodbye to her more properly, I’m sure I didn’t. Do you think she misses me?” On and on until Dolokhov could hear himself screaming at Anatole to shut up in his head, but he never did it. And as if this was not enough, Anatole would then brew plans for the future with more conviction and excitement almost than Dolokhov had seen before.

“It’s going to be different this time” he would say – “I thought about it so hard in the first days – after Borodino you know when everything was still so awful – I’ve been doing things all wrong before. Like when we came home after Budapest, we should never have come home. I’ll tell Helene, she’ll realise. We could run away together and stay that way this time. There’s no point in wasting time with anything other than happiness is there? And you and Helene – you’re what makes me happy.”

If Helene had been alive it might have been everything he had wanted to hear. Eventually putting it off became more and more awkward and Anatole, as he had feared he might but refused to believe, was becoming fractious, asking repeatedly when they would see Helene and finally insisting on going to her right _now_ until, on the border or an enormous row he said Anatole’s name very calmly, steadily.

“Anatole”

Anatole was not listening. Still calm but just a little louder –

“Anatole she’s dead” he looks down at the floor, head heavy – “Helene is dead”.

he can hear the rush of silence, thunderously loud in his ears. Well it was done, it was out. So many months spent imagining how it would sound, trying to think of a better way to say _dead._ There was no better way to say it, but hearing it out loud feels somehow like déjà vu. It feels as though he is the one hearing the news for the first time and felt alarmingly as though he might finally cry.

Anatole, to his surprise and utter horror, having stared at him for a long silent moment , started to laugh, a little nervously with too many teeth in it.

“That’s –” he scowls – “That’s really not all that funny Fedya.”

“I’m not joking” he swallows  a curse in his throat. his eyes are stinging. Anatole looks at him long and hard – looks at him for too long, seeing the truth in his face. When he finds it his face goes grey, washed out and sinking in on itself.

“No” he says quietly.

“Yes” he has never felt more awkward – “I’m sorry.” He winches at the addition that sounds so awful – as though that could possibly be enough.

“I don’t know –” Anatole begins. Dolokhov would spend the next few months trying to guess what he had wanted to say, taking this start at a sentence as the only explanation for what happened afterwards that he had.

“What happened” Anatole says with barely even the inflection of a question in his voice. His voice sounds like something that has crawled up out of a grave. Dolokhov tells him all of it as briefly as he can.

“You’ll hear a different story from everyone else of course” he says “But it’s the truth. She wrote to me just before she –she would have written to you she said but –”

“But I was dead” Anatole says in a voice that implies the sudden ridiculousness of his being otherwise – “I was dead” he repeats – “That’s why – isn’t it?”

Dolokhov closes his eyes, sure he can hear the cracking sound in his chest;

“Yes darling boy, that’s why.”

Anatole nods and sits very still, barely blinking.

“Anatole?” Dolokhov is more alarmed by this than by any other possible reaction. Anatole does not react – “Anatole?”.

But Anatole is gone. He does not speak, does not even seem to hear and nothing Dolokhov can do or say can change it.

__x__

 

 

**Guys I'm so sorry, I mangled the posting and THIS is meant to be Chapter 32 not what I originally posted which was meant to be Chapter 33! Thanks heaps to _Alleyskywalker_ for pointing this out to me. What a tit I am, it's cause I was tired at time of posting and got confused because they're both "Dolokhov 1813" :-)**


	33. Dolokhov 1813

**Dolokhov, 1813**

Anatole’s continued silence is frightening. Dolokhov had not thought, of all the things that could shake him, that silence could prove without a doubt to be the most shattering, the most unbeatable of foes.

But it goes beyond a simple inability to speak. It is a stillness; a lack of response that strikes Dolokhov as, above everything, so utterly unlike Anatole. Some days he is not sure Anatole even hears him. Most days he just sits, no longer willing to try and walk let alone talk, just sits and stares at nothing. Dolokhov finds himself having to put Anatole in different places just for a change of scene and Anatole, to his horror, simply lets himself be moved. He does not eat without coaxing, the only thing he will willingly do is sleep, and then he does that so willingly that many mornings Dolokhov finds it hard to wake him. These are the only times Anatole will give him something like a response, grunting an objection and burrowing his head beneath the sheets, batting at him feebly when he tries to make him sit up. This makes him all the less likely to want to leave him alone.

He tries to imagine what can be going on inside that head; that head that he used to joke contained so little and now truly seems to contain nothing at all, not even thought. He cannot imagine it, cannot fathom the loss. Loss for him has always been a part of life- he has never had expectations, only aspirations. Anatole, if anything, has always been the other way round. He understands the sadness of losing someone, he is still mourning Helene himself, but he has not lost himself through losing her, not like Anatole seems to have done. He tries to understand and cannot. Anatole’s eyes slide off things if they ever focus for a second at all. Sometimes he fancies Anatole looks at him when he speaks, that when their eyes meet there is contact there, sometimes, on the best of days he sees something like recognition in those eyes. Most days he finds nothing at all.

He tries everything in cycles to break him out of it, to bring him back. He wonders where he is, wonders if Anatole even knows. He thinks he understands, at least to some degree that the blow was too much, that Anatole, unable even to fathom simple and smaller pieces of bad news, has simply vacated the premises of himself in the face of something that is far too big for him to think or even feel his way around. He has not even cried; he would have been prepared for that, expected it even. He has not cried himself; this does not make him worry less about Anatole.

He tries everything to bring him back, every possible method of obtaining every possible reaction. He talks gently, talks about everything he can think of, avoids speaking of Helene, will only speak of Helene. He is gentle beyond belief, coaxing, furious, raging and verbally vicious by turns. Nothing. At one point he goes so far as to contact Prince Vasily. The Prince’s visit is brief and unsuccessful, awkward and without even stirring a flicker in Anatole’s face. The Prince returns to Petersburg and does not say anything to alter the general consensus that his son is dead.

The only time in all of that long half a year that Dolokhov gets anything from Anatole at all is one cold day in March after two months of nothing when he announces, gently, almost on his way out the door – because he has been trying an offhand approach of late in the hope of catching Anatole out, almost – that he is going to cemetery and would Anatole like to join him. He has been doing this every time he goes out, in less and less hope that Anatole will be moved by it but this time he looks up. He turns his head to look at him and initially just frowns as though he has been far away and cannot quite remember what is happening.

“I’m going to visit her grave,” Dolokhov repeats – “Do you want to come?”

Anatole frowns more deeply and for a long moment before the frown clears and he nods minutely. Dolokhov fights the urge to express his delight, and after all he cannot be _that_ pleased when the cause is such a grim one, and he helps Anatole into the carriage he had called, trying not to think too deeply how this is the first time he has got him out the house.

The sky is grey when they get out of the carriage, Anatole leaning partly on crutches, partly on Dolokhov, face scrunched up as though he has forgotten the sensation of wind. It is breezy up here and Dolokhov imagines it must feel strange against the skin after so long indoors. Somehow, slowly they cross over the grass to the grave. Anatole’s eyes follow the flowers in Dolokhov’s hand intently, meadow flowers, larkspur and poppies, fire weed and baby’s breath, the colourful jumble of favourites he always knew she liked but never really understood why; they were so colourful, so clashing, so unlike her usual refined and elegant preferences. But they had always made her smile. Anatole strokes the petals before Dolokhov puts them on the ground, a few wispy fragments of red and blue drifting between his fingers to the ground. He looks so far away, Dolokhov thinks, but closer all the same than he has been in a while. He offers Anatole the flowers to put down, but Anatole shakes his head and gestures stiffly for him to do it. He does not take his eyes off the flowers until the head of a poppy is brushing the _L_ in Helene’s name, the red startling bright against the stone. _Colour in a grey world,_ Dolokhov thinks, _god I wish there was something to kill, any easier battle than this._

The flowers down, Anatole starts to cry. Strange though it is, Dolokhov feels his heart lift. He holds on for a long time whilst Anatole cries, still curiously silently, into his shoulder, shaking but alive between the slab of sky and the stone beneath them. It feels as though he will never stop and Dolokhov is somehow happier with that than he has been. But he does stop, a river or so later, bends over as best he can and brushes the letters of her name in the stone, frowning at _Bezukhova_ as though it is some kind of a mistake.

In the weeks that follow Anatole still does not speak, though he reacts now, at least to follow Dolokhov with his eyes, nod or shake his head in response to questions. He eats without prompting, watches the world around him without staring through it quite as absently as before. It is still not enough, Dolokhov thinks. He stops trying the ever turning cycle of different approaches, and simply loves and is patient. He had not known he had that in him. 

Until finally, on a warm day in July, Anatole has been sat looking out of the window, half here, half absent all morning but he turns when Dolokhov picks up a bag, shrugs on a light coat and abruptly says –

“Goodbye, Anatole.”

Anatole frowns deeply. His mouth opens a fraction, lips moving as though he has forgotten how to speak, but no sound comes out.

“I can’t do this anymore,” Dolokhov sighs heavily, he feels it, with an enormous part of his soul, the weight of responsibility of trying and trying without success – “I’m sorry Anatole, I’ll find someone else for you but I have to go, travel - I don’t know yet - anywhere.” He says it as though a series of questions that have not been asked have been vocalised between the lines.

“I’m sorry,” he says, picking his bag off the floor and pausing, walking almost in slow motion out the door. His back is all but completely turned when he hears a whisper at first, just one word –

“ _Don’t.”_

He turns, smiles, raises an eyebrow, not speaking his question.

“Don’t go,” Anatole’s voice is louder now, as though it has found its way home again after travelling for too long. He moves his lips slowly and silently for a moment as though getting used to the feel of words again. For the first time, positively since he has known him, Dolokhov dares to believe that home might be where he is. He does not move.

“Please – Fedya don’t go – I –” his eyes widen – “I don’t _want_ someone else. I – just you. I – don’t go. Please.”

Dolokhov smiles. He is not sure he has ever heard Anatole say _please_ in his life. Even as he smiles he feels the tears leap in his eyes. How long has it been he thinks – since he ever cried? Months, years a life time?

“Darling boy –” he drops his bag, comes back inside, closes the door, gets down on his knees besides Anatole’s chair, takes hold of the hands clenched – for the first time not lying limply – in his lap – and kisses the pale fingers, smiling and shaking his head – “I was never going to”.

He hears Anatole’s intake of breath. Thinks that once he would have shouted, even laughed at him obnoxiously for the trick, but now when the ghost of a smile creeps onto Anatole’s face instead, it is dearer to him than the loudest laugh or shout and he is crying into Anatole’s knee, crying until he can barely breathe and Anatole, frowning and smiling and stroking his hair murmuring – _Don’t, it’s alright, don’t cry Fedya, it will be alright, it will be alright you’ll see._

__x__

**Well this broke my beta, largely because the flowers- for – Helene specifics were a reference to their fic “Name Day” (By _zedrobber_ for the 2007 version – it’s beauty, go read!) I am sorry/ not sorry for all the heart breaking. :-)**

**Additional note - I accidentally posted this as chapter 32 instead of what was meant to be chapter 32 but have gone back and inserted the correct chapter 32 and put this one here where it belongs and I am so sorry for the confusion. :-)**   

 


	34. Dolokhov

 

**Dolokhov**

So they go on, pushing their boat out cautiously into the future, beating against the tides that pull them back, always back. Sometimes Anatole especially takes on a glassy gaze, head cocked to one side as though he can hear a voice calling him back that he cannot bear to ignore. But slowly, some days by millimetres, some by miles, they push forward. And sometimes they capsize completely and it feels as though they might both go under; but they do not, somehow or other they always drag each other back up before either of them can drown. Because life, as Dolokhov has always known, life demands and life must and there is always something every day, something to make it worth the struggle.

And if Anatole is merely a shadow of what he used to be -and some days it seems he really is- then who of us, Dolokhov thinks, is not. We are none of who we were. This does not immediately imply that to be such a shadow is necessarily bad. He thinks of all his many incarnations and is never sure which of them was more him than the others. We are all diminished by our losses, coloured by them, some of the fights and the damage making us stronger and others of them not. Anatole, ever incapable of living for the future, often slips more into the past than the present that used to dominate him. But he pulls himself out of every reverie, shaking his head and saying –

“Good times, eh Fedya?” and sometimes, not as often as he might like, he sees him smile and even laugh, not raucous and uncontained as he used to laugh but gently, cautiously, the way Helene used to laugh when she was in public.

There is not a day that goes by that they do not mention her. Even years later they still lay the table for three. Dolokhov suspects that this is not necessarily healthy but he knows Anatole would not have it otherwise and in truth, he would not either. When Anatole goes out alone, as he does for short periods now and then, he still brings back trinkets, pretty things the world has offered him, feathers and pebbles and all the pretty things that he has never lost his eye for even if he has lost it in regard to other people. He always returns with something random for Dolokhov and something else for the drawer in the top of the dresser that is not actually marked with Helene’s name but may as well be. He chatters to her gently as he lays each new offering in, sometimes looking round furtively as though afraid Dolokhov will laugh at him but he is far from laughing at it. It is as religious a behaviour as he has ever seen from Anatole and far be it from him to question any man’s form or object of worship out loud.

One day he does ask, half curious, half smiling –

“Don’t you ever have enough pebbles and feathers and –”

“Pinecones?” Anatole raises an eyebrow.

“Pinecones, yes.” They both laugh, thinking of Anatole’s three month long pinecone phase, cupboards and drawers becoming full of them, Dolokhov sitting on them, standing on them, ultimately dreaming of pinecones, checking under the pillow for them before he went to sleep. In the end he had gently brought up the courage to ask Anatole if he could have a slight clear out, and Anatole had watched his every move suspiciously after saying yes. There was now a large rotting bucket of pinecones in front of the house.

Anatole shrugs at the question, eyes bright today like the magpie he is –

“If the world ever stops giving me things I suppose I’ll stop taking them, he says “But pretty things are there to be enjoyed aren’t they? And if the world wants to give me gifts, who am I to say no?”

“Gifts?”

“Oh. Everything’s a gift,” he says airily – “You me, feathers and leaves. If it’s nice and it feels good, I’ll take it and be happy, won’t you?”

He wishes he could see things as simply as Anatole does, but at least he will take the offerings his wounded bird brings back.

“Helene always said I’d grow out of it,” he says a little later  - “I hope she knows I can still prove her wrong.” He grins to himself before adding – “ _She_ was a gift too. The first and the brightest. I wish –” he bites his lip; he tries not to wish so much these days – “Eh, not everything can last can it?” he shrugs – “Just have to make the most of things. You’re still here, thank god.”

“Yes dearest –” Dolokhov squeezes his hand – “Yes, I’m still here.”

Years pass. They live. It is perhaps the greatest victory that can ever be achieved, the greatest joy to be able to say _we continue, we go on._ Life, it seems, will always be the happy ending, to see and feel and enjoy, and even if they fight sometimes and hurt and remember and cry-if these things happen every day so too do the others. They eat and drink, play and row, laugh at the grey in each other’s hair, wonder when it first crept in, how they never noticed. They live and they love and a thousand stories pass by in silence until another end reaches them.

Twenty years later, thirty perhaps, Anatole dies of old age younger than he ought. He is too accepting; Dolokhov thinks, too ready to go, and he cannot bring himself either to unhappiness or misery at this being the case. In the last weeks Anatole feels it creeping up on him, feels himself slipping and does not fight it.

“It’s been fun hasn’t it?” he says smiling – “Life I mean. It’s a good show. I always knew we had just one between us – Helene and I - I mean. It makes sense I suppose – that we would just have one span between us – I suppose – I suppose there has to be some balance for how happy we’ve been. I don’t mind, I think the only evil would be to go without being able to say I enjoyed it. Yes –” he nods decidedly – “I think so. I’ve done alright. I wonder –” he looks almost excited at the consideration – “I wonder what happens next, eh? Don’t you wish I could tell you?”

He frowns then for the first time –

“You’ll be alright, eh Fedya? Without me, I mean – don’t miss me too much when I’m gone eh?”

Dolokhov swallows hard.

“Miss you?” he grins – “I’ll be glad of the peace and quiet.”

Anatole slaps him weakly, calls him names –

“You and your stupid jokes,” he grins – “I’ll miss you. Even in heaven. We’ll be watching you, you know that right?”

Anatole’s mind, always as steady as a butterfly, now flicks from emotion to emotion quicker than leaves of a book fluttering in a sudden wind and from half serious he suddenly becomes entirely so –

“You remember when I told you Helene was the first great gift life ever gave me?”

Dolokhov nods –

“I always felt bad for saying that because I thought you might feel you were – I don’t know, _less_ somehow? But it makes sense you see, because she was there at the beginning and you – you’re here now at the end, and maybe that’s what defines a man’s life, y’know – who was there at the beginning and then at the end? You’ve balanced me, you and Helene – you’ve been the things to keep life so good, and I love you, both the same and not the same, you know?”

He is not fully sure he _does_ know, but Anatole’s drifting eyes are begging to be understood and he knows at least, what he doubted for so long at the beginning – that he is loved and it easy enough to nod and squeeze that frail hand as say –

“Yes, yes I know.”

Anatole smiles and says goodbye.

Dolokhov sits in silence for hours or days. Sometimes he walks in silence, standing out on the front porch looking up at the sky wondering how it is, how it can be _possible_ that that grey wide sky is still the same. Surely, he thinks, there should at least be another comet, a great streak to slash the grey from side to side, for the comet after all, brought nothing, not really, and this, surely is the end of the world.

When nothing happens he begins to realise that once again life goes on; or something like it. He feels hollowed out, diminished beyond measure without their sparkle, their glamour. Their laughs still reel between his ears but all the brightness, the beauty is gone. Without them, without anything, what is he now? Just a man on the verge of being old, with only an internal self to keep him going.

It is enough. It has always been enough, and if the price for being amongst the bright and the beautiful is a fleeting life then the consolation surely for being otherwise is endurance. _We go on,_ he thinks. _I can make us all go on._ This is what he has: himself, their memories, the laughter between the ears and the thousand appellations that belong to him, _Dolokhov the assassin, the explorer, the fighter. Dolokhov the soldier, the daredevil, the reprobate._ Everything gone now that makes life beautiful, everything but the will to go on.

So another story starts. It starts with a man on the road, in the desert, out at sea. It starts with a man on the deck of a ship with the salt spray in his face, a man out of place and out of time, a stranger in a heavy greatcoat looking forwards, looking at nothing, looking at everything. A man that nobody dares speak to and everyone wonders about. He can hear them whisper about him and he smiles to himself but does not let rumour or legend fester into fact, preferring to remain apart from it all. Perhaps he gets a reputation for loneliness, for danger, for romance. He cares, but he does not care which. He hopes they write the stories down.

He imagines worlds and sets out to see them. He knows the imagined world will be a thousand miles apart from the place he is headed towards. He pictures new worlds and writes over them with the places he sees and at night he dreams of a land that is stranger and more distant still, a world where flowers grow the likes of which can never be seen, where the clouds are strange and the meadows and forests are populated with strange beasts and rainbow plants. He dreams of horses with wings, silver and copper and a palace set in the heart of a fantastical maze where a princess has waited for her prince to come home. He dreams of them standing on the battlements, looking out across their kingdom, smiling with the sunset on their skin, looking out across the fields for the rider they know will come to join them soon enough. He can hear the song of fantastical birds, see the dust of the road spray up golden beneath his horse’s feet.  

He does not love, he hears them say, does not feel as other men do and perhaps it has become true he could not say. The only thing for certain now is wherever he goes, whatever strange winds he braves he turns his face into them head on, a smooth, well-worn pebble in his pocket and a ring on a chain around his neck.

And the sky is irrelevant.

__x__

**It’s finished folks can you believe it?! There will be an epilogue to come though so keep an eye out! :-)**


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